MasterChef Asia winner's Restaurant Ibid launches lunch menu
Winning a reality TV show does open doors. Just ask MasterChef Asia winner Woo Wai Leong.
He opened Restaurant Ibid in May, and his dinner-only set menu won praise, The Business Times calling his food "highly original".
His restaurant is now one of the hottest in town, as everybody wants a taste of his modern Chinese food.
If you have had no luck with a dinner reservation, it has launched its lunch menu, available only from Wednesdays to Fridays. There are set menus but you have a la carte choices too.
And the food identity doesn't change.
Chef Woo is sticking to his format, inspired by traditional Nanyang dishes, while giving it just that touch of modernity.
One good example is his take on the Hakka classic Thunder Tea Rice. Ibid's version is Black Grouper with Thunder Tea Rice Porridge ($16).
The texture of the carb is pleasing - somewhere between porridge and risotto - but it is the flavour that I responded to. The greens made you feel healthy, and complemented the pan fried black grouper.
The Herbal Pork Rib Rice Bowl ($14) contains one of the best ribs I've tasted.
Iberico pork ribs are braised in a mixture of soy and spices, then braising liquid is reduced to a glaze and used to coat the pork ribs upon order. The pork is so tender and dense with an almost-caramel like taste.
I could eat a plate of the ribs.
Chef Woo's Shaobing is one of the most loved items on his dinner menu, but the Shaobing Burger ($14) did not work for me.
It was a too-hard bite - I was sawing through the bottom portion of the burger - and the medium-rare beef patty didn't come across as anything special.
I wish one or the other left an impression, but both elements didn't.
The dish called General Tso's chicken, served in North American Chinese restaurants, is really quite awful.
But Ibid's version, General Soh's Fried Chicken ($8), is far from that. The sauce is made from vinegar and sugar and gave the chicken bits a gloriously tangy coat.
It also achieved another first for me. It's the first time I was not turned off by a coriander salad. Coriander is usually best kept away from me, but whatever magic he puts in it, it works.
I live for sugee cakes so I was definitely curious to try Ibid's brown butter semolina cake with sesame oil ice cream ($8).
I didn't hate it, but I've had better. But what I did like tremendously was the ice cream. I recently had a delightful hae go (prawn paste) ice cream, and now this. Before you know it, a meal will be served in scoops.
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