Style v substance at Le Pristine

NEW RESTAURANT

Le Pristine Singapore Grand Hyatt Singapore 10 Scotts Road Singapore 228211 Tel: 6732-1234 Open for dinner from Tues to Sat: 6 pm to 9 pm. Lunch on Fri to Sat: 12 pm to 2 pm

PICK your favourite imagery as you step into Le Pristine’s trippy wine tunnel – an all-black passageway with an ominous red glow. A James Bond turn-and-shoot? Or a deep, yawning abyss where your inner demons and primary school Chinese teacher reside?

If you want style, art and visual delights, you’re in the right place. Feast your eyes on the dizzying array of lights, shapes and colours around you. It feels like a cross between an art illumination and a test for glaucoma.

This is a restaurant of contrasts. Cool, but not warm. Big, but actually quite small. Fine dining, yet casual. Until now, we’re wondering if we had a good time or were we just expected to?

Such is the sense we get of Le Pristine, the flagship restaurant of the newly renovated Grand Hyatt. It is destined to make an impression, and for all intents and purposes, it does. Sergio Herman, a chef of some repute in the Netherlands, has brought in some serious art work and given the space a chic gallery vibe with cocktail party accents.

Food-wise, it is less definitive. It’s self-styled “new Italian”, but cooked by a Dutch chef with strong links to his native Zeeland – a province in western Netherlands known for its sea and seafood. You may get pasta and tiramisu, but the “new” label allows the cooking to veer into France and make a pit stop in Scandinavia, among other places.

For all the visual song and dance, the dining room is surprisingly tight, space-wise. Apart from some roomy banquettes that seem to be reserved for preferred guests, most tables are packed close to each other like in an elevated coffee house. Which seems to be at odds with the classy mood it tries to evoke.

While there’s a chef’s menu for S$180, it’s mostly a curated pick of a la carte options. So if you’re a first-timer, it makes more sense to pick the latter and hedge your bets.

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We start off with two types of raw oysters (S$26 and S$28 for two) which are the mollusc version of having uninvited guests showing up at your house and refusing to leave. The sad little oysters are hemmed into their shells by an overload of condiments including stracciatella cheese, granita, oyster leaves, chopped salad, sea buckthorn and fennel. The presentation is pretty but it’s a jumbled mouthful.

Pizzette with a chilli crab topping (S$26) is a nod to the local favourite – the hot focaccia is crunchy and the crab just a tad spicy, but the overload of salt does it no favours.

For a touch of luxury, there’s a caviar-sized tin layered with chopped raw langoustine, foie gras mousse and caviar (S$48). Scoop up hefty spoonfuls of this creamy and salty pleasure on toasted spears of brioche. It’s safe and predictable, but enjoyable.

Up next is cannelloni (S$35), a roll of fresh pasta stuffed with a spinach mixture, topped with mussels and bathed in a sauce of vin jaune and sea buckthorn. The pasta is tender, and the sauce is rich, but again, predictable.

For the mains, crispy scalloppina (S$68 per person) turns out to be veal cordon bleu, a dish we thought had gone the way of the dodo. This blast from the past features flattened veal cutlets sandwiching ham and melted cheese, deep-fried in a crumb crust till the cheese oozes out when cut. It’s served tableside with mini pommes dauphine, little gougeres of mashed potato mixed with choux pastry. It’s comforting, but what we really want is to be impressed.

The best part of the meal would be the collapsed tiramisu (S$24), a composed layer of fluffy sponge cake and lightly whipped coffee mousse held together by a corset, which is released to flop over your dessert plate in the same satisfying way that you loosen your belt after a curry lunch.

The conundrum for Le Pristine is that it’s too fussy to be casual, and not polished enough to be fine. Each step it takes in one direction simply cancels out strides made in the other. With inconsistent service by a somewhat inexperienced staff, and a menu with no clear narrative, Le Pristine comes across as wanting to be all things to everyone while sacrificing a strong identity in the process. And you know what happens to jacks of all trades. It’s got style, but it needs substance to match.

Rating: 6.5