The chef was personally checking and cooking almost all dishes for the night. Brent Savage is from Australia's Bentley Restaurant and Bar, and he was named Sydney Morning Herald's Chef of the Year 2005 and awarded 2 Chef hats from 2007-2011 in the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide. Awarding a chef with "hats" by the SMH in Australia is almost similar to that of awarding a chef with "michelin" stars.
Everyone who dined in during that period will want to try out their 7 courses menu at S$230++ including wine pairing.
Dinner started with this Octopus with Black Olive & Cucumber. The octopus was fresh without being too "rubbery".
One of our favourite dish, the Ocean Trout with Ocean Trout Mousse & Fennel Pollen, was magnificently done. That white crispy thing you see is actually trout fish skin crackling, which was light, crisp and had a nice taste. The Ocean Trout Mousse was something exciting and new to us, and the cured roll has one of the freshest trout taste we had for a long time.
Sorry, but we don't like our vegetables. So the Beetroot with Sorrel, Horseradish & Broad Beans could be said as rather ordinary.
Roast pork is always a familiar dish for diners in Asia, and the Pork Belly with Wattle, Garlic Milk & Rhubarb. The cubes of pork belly is juicy and all had a crispy crackling skin. Yums.
The Roasted Duck Breast with Cuttlefish & Mushroom was even better. We understand that both the pork and duck dishes are exact replicas of what is offered at his restaurant in Australia. The black powder you see underneath the juicy roasted duck is actually mushrom powder. It's amazing how good the cuttlefish, duck and mushroom powder complimented each other.
Just want to add that the chef had a wonderful group of chefs and assistants from the Tippling Club helping him throughout the whole evening. Chef Alex is one of the young talent in the team that not only passionate in the cooking art, but also excellent in interacting with diners.
It's dessert time. And the first was the Caramelised Pineapple with Barley Cream & Beer Sorbet. How often do you have a sorbet made of beer, and I can tell you that the sorbet really taste like beer. It was "sweetened" with the caramelised pineapple and a rather faint barley cream.
A special off the menu dessert for diners - a dessert made wholly of chocolate. There is chocolate mousse, chocolate caramel crisps. Heaven for chocolate lovers.
Finally we ended our dinner with his signature Liquid Mandarin with Liquorice & Mandarin Ice-Cream. It was quite fun to break the chocolate "pipe" to see liquid mandarin flowing out from the chocolate.
During our dinner, Alex told us that Tippling Club will be shifting to Istana Park in the next few months, which is somewhere near to Giraffe. Seems like Tippling Club will see even more traffic flow after they move to the more accessible Istana Park in the near future.
Tippling Club
8D Dempsey Road