Entrepôt Unveils Delectable Festive Menu Blending Anglo-Asian Cuisine

What a pleasure it was to try out Entrepot - both their festive menu and their standard lunch and dinner sets.  Now, let's face it - hotel restaurants are often a much of a muchness.  Bland and uninspiring!  But Entrepot was anything but that.  The menu blends Western cooking styles with Asian flavours and traditional dishes.   

The chef is almost daring the restaurant clientele to find the differences between the innovative food offering and the traditional dishes on which they are based.  It is a bold move but one that largely pays off with the majority of the dishes we tried being super successful.   So let's start with lunch which is shaped around two things, roti john and everything else.  Roti John is a play on the traditional English sandwich.  This time, the bread is a baguette and each sandwich comes with a wafer thin, oriental style omelette as the base on top of which you can chose your topping.  I had the Beefy John, succulent and tender flank steak with a Kampot pepper sauce, yummy caramelised onion and coleslaw.  It was so delicious!  Luckily you can chose from half and full serves because I needed to fit one more main in.  And this one was super yum as well.  Tiger prawn bisque pasta was a perfectly executed example of this Anglo-Asian fusion style the restaurant is playing on.  Think traditional prawn pasta, but now amp this up with a rich chilli and garlic oil with hints of fresh Asian herbs.  The pasta was think cut, a nod to the possibilities that this could quite easily have been an Asian noodle dish rather than pasta.  The prawns were plump, the pasta al dente and the chilli and garlic was definitely the chef's kiss!  I would definitely order this again.  We also sampled the festive buffet which was good but not outstanding and more in line with a standard hotel buffet.

Now we come to dinner.  We were treated to a tasting menu of Entrepot's signature dishes. Thank goodness because they were all so delish!  We started with a Chinese Terracotta Tea, served as it sounds with a traditional tea cup and pot.  This time the pot was filled with crab tortellini and the pot with broth steeped in umami and smoky notes driven from the tea and shiitake mushroom base.  While only a mouthful, this was a spectacular start to the menu.   Next up was a salad of tomato and herbs, once again elevated by including Asian flavours in this case a fermented plum dressing.  You know when tomatoes actually taste like tomatoes?  They can't be beaten and this was a simple and clean dish to almost cleanse the palate before our next course.

I love claypot rice!  The more blackened the better for me.  So I was excited to see Entrepot's own signature claypot dish, although at first I was a tad disappointed to see lap cheong replaced with chorizo.  But this is the mission of the restaurant, to update the old with the new.  Chorizo and smoky pancetta complimented by harissa notes and crunchy, charry rice were amazing.  You can call me a convert to the new ways.

Our final savoury dish was the highlight in more ways then one.  With a dramatic unveiling as the lid of a box is slowly lifted, the corn-fed chicken roast again blends Western and Asian techniques and flavours perfectly.  The chicken is slow roasted, tender and juicy with subtle hints of angelica root and smoke.  You are served a whole chicken, with vegetables and a rich and complex jus.  I am pretty sure my assistant would have drunk the jus from the serving dish if we weren't in public.  This was an amazing meal, almost that meal that justifies your entire visit to the restaurant.

Finally dessert.  Honestly, I was stuffed by this time but the assistant took one for the team and kept going.   The dessert played more to Asian styles with Longan and Pecan tart paired with white fungus and vanilla ice cream.  If you don't like your desserts on the sweet side then this is definitely one for you.

The service across both meals was delightful.  The team were engaging and attentive, nothing was too much trouble. 

Entrepot is definitely somewhere to add to your list of places to try.  The food and services are great and prices not outrageous for the quality.  Do yourself a favour!