Greenhouse dining at Sol & Luna

NEW RESTAURANT

Sol & Luna

#17-01 CapitaSpring

88 Market Street

Singapore 048948

Tel: 8031 4316

Open Mon to Sat: 8am to 10.30pm

WHAT a difference a pandemic makes to the workplace. Pre-Covid, you're beavering away in a tiny office cubicle with no access to natural sunlight, much less a walk in the park. Back then, we went to work so that we could go home. But now, office planners are all about making work look like home, just to entice us back to the office again.

The extent differs, but if you happen to be an office drone at CapitaSpring or thereabouts, rejoice because not only can you get lunch sent to your office, they've also delivered the Botanic Gardens to your doorstep - thankfully without the mosquitoes.

It's no Treetop Walk, but 'urban jungle' gets new meaning with the lush greenery in place from the 17th floor upwards. You can't see the skyscrapers for the trees, and with a bit of imagination you can pretend you're hiking in a national park - ok, maybe not but if you get hungry at least there's Sol & Luna there for you to refuel after expending all those phantom calories.

Billed as a Latin-European restaurant, Sol & Luna is really an all-day cafe that serves everything except Asian food. For all the green space on that entire floor, you'd think it warrants a little more space than the tight little glass cube it's packed into. It looks shiny and captivating when empty but once it fills up, it feels like a crowded greenhouse with trapped tomatoes fighting for room to sprout.

They're pretty noisy too, packed into tables too close to each other and served by staff who might be eggplants in disguise, since they don't seem to know whether to feed us or water us. Don't expect slick or polished service, and cut them a bit of slack because it's not for lack of trying. If anything, we blame the managers who just can't seem to get their house in order.

Food-wise, we're there for dinner and while there's some attempt at creativity, it's too big a menu for such a small eatery so the execution is generally off the mark.

Toasted sourdough (S$5.50) is an easy pleaser, especially with butter and roasted garlic smeared all over it. Save some of it to mop up the creamy ooze of baked Italian tomino cheese (S$22) wrapped in salty parma ham. It would take a mean, bitter person to not like anything that's cheesy, salty and comforting.

We don't reserve the same goodwill for dry, rubbery grilled octopus (S$24) which gets little lift from a bland romesco sauce with paprika as the only discernible flavour.

Wood-fired sardine (S$19) is a nice try at presenting the fishy piscean in a different light. It looks like a little sausage, wrapped in parma ham (again) and stuffed with breadcrumbs, pine nuts and minced mussels. Your tolerance for funky fish needs to be a little higher to appreciate this combination which is interesting if not a hit. The butternut puree on the side seems to have been plopped there more for colour contrast than actual purpose. Escalivada (S$14) too, is a surprisingly good combo of melty, pureed smoky eggplant, red peppers and salty anchovies.

We order a whole baby free-range chicken (S$28) but are served only half of it, the other half either invisible to us or already escaped on the nearest MRT. It's ok, we don't miss it since what's left is dry, under-seasoned and served with a piri-piri sauce that could be peri-peri by another name and we still wouldn't care.

But we do care about our Portuguese egg tarts (S$10) and we would revoke the citizenship of the pair that appear before us - imposters of powdery lemon steamed egg paste in damp pastry that tries to be flaky but loses interest halfway.

Given the crowd at Sol & Luna, this is very much a hangout for people working in the area. For them, it serves its purpose but for everyone else, maybe the trees are greener on some other side.

Rating: 6

jaime@sph.com.sg

@JaimeEeBT

WHAT OUR RATINGS MEAN

10: The ultimate dining experience

9-9.5: Sublime

8-8.5: Excellent

7-7.5: Good to very good

6-6.5: Promising

5-5.5: Average

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