You probably wouldn’t have known that there’s a restaurant hidden beside the Black and White Colonial-style bungalows along Scoots Road. But there it is, tucked away in the corner beside JUNGSAEMMOOL Beauty Flagship store in Singapore is this unpretentious fine dining restaurant that offers contemporary Taiwanese cuisine. This restaurant, Iru Den, is also featured in The Michelin Guide.
Helming Iru Den’s Kitchen
Iru Den is opened by Singaporean Chef Javier Low and his Taiwanese wife. It’s a small and cosy restaurant with 12 counter seats and a private dining area. He cultivated his craft early on at Iggy’s in Singapore and further refined his technique at Michelin-starred Cenci in Kyoto.
The Interior
Iru Den features an open kitchen concept and the 12-counter seats. You can watch the chefs preparing the dishes. The other side of the restaurant is a long dining table for large group dinings. Since the restaurant is relatively small, reservations are highly recommended.
There is a mininum spend requirement to booking the private dining room.
The Menu at Iru Den
There are 3 types of menu to choose from:
Lunch menu: 6-course ($128++)
Degustation menu: 6-course ($158++)
Chef Experience menu: 8-course ($218++)
We tried their degustation menu with an additional cocktail pairing at $58. The cocktails are pretty decent so if you are into cocktails, it is worth trying their cocktail pairings. There are a total of 3 cocktails served.
Degustation Menu (6 courses)
I appreciate that the staff would explain the ingredients present in dish and how they are sourced. But the staff was quite soft-spoken so we could not quite hear what she was trying to say.
She would whipped out an iPad showing images of the key ingredients used for some of the selected dishes. I find that this practice is quite common at Michelin-starred restaurants – except that they will be presenting the actual real ingredients instead of the digital version of the ingredient. Nothing beats seeing the physical tangible ingredients where you can touch and smell them.
“CAI PU” Chicken Broth
This was a highly savoury and hearty chicken broth that is truly comforting. There’s nothing really outstanding but it’s a great appetiser to warm up the stomach.
Snacks: Plum & Pickled Cherry Tomato with Oyster, San Dan Gui & Sweet Spicy Sauce
Thankfully, each dish gets subsequently better and better. This canapé-like snacks are actually really tasty.
Striped Marlin: Marlin Tataki, Soursop & Seaweed
This reminded me of Yu Sheng or raw marinated fish that is usually served with Cantonese-style porridge. The raw fish is fresh and well-seasoned.
Homemade Ciabatta, Brown Butter Caipu
It was quite clever of the chef to make use of Cai Poh or dried radish in this course. Cai Poh has a natural savoury flavour with a slight umami kick. Mixing Cai Poh in brown butter is one way to infused a common Chinese ingredient into this course.
The Ciabatta bread was served warmed. My only qualm is that the butter served was too hard and I had a hard time trying to scrape some butter onto the bread. It would have been great if they left it out a little longer at room temperature to soften it.
Taichung Somen, Uni & Prickly Ash
They used the high-grade uni that has a burst of oceanic sweetness. It sits nicely on a dollop of somen or Taiwanese mee sua. The thin noodles are firm and chewy.
Red Prawn, Shellfish Broth, Fermented Bean Sauce & Egg Custard
At this point, you can tell that most of the dishes served also have elements of Japanese cuisine woven into them. This egg custard is similar to Chawanmushi. But it’s a really delicious Chawanmushi with lobster chunks in it.
Pork Cheek, 3 cup Sauce & Basil Chimichurri
This is another stellar dish but I would personally have prefered if they served waygu beef instead of using pork cheek. I felt that pork meat doesn’t really absorb the flavour of the sauce as well as quality beef meat. The braised sauce was flavourful though.
Seasonal Claypot Rice
Like at any omakase restaurant, they like to serve rice as the final dish before the desserts. This carb-heavy dish would probably fill our tummies up. And yes, we were quite full at this point but this claypot rice dish isn’t quite it for me. The claypot rice itself lacked flavour and the crunchy baby sakura shrimps were a tad too much for the dish. It gives the dish an added crunchy texture but there’s too much of it and it made the dish taste seemingly quite dry.
Grilled Marinated Pineapple, Pineapple filling & Amazake Ice Cream
On the menu, the dish was named as pineapple tart. And I literally thought that they are going to serve a gourmet-looking pineapple tart with pineapple filling in it. I was not expecting the dessert to turn out the one shown below. It’s a rather common presentation of a dessert served at fine dining restaurant. But one mouthful of this sent me straight to cloud nine. This dessert was absolutely divine.
I never knew that pineapple tart could be reimagined to be plated in this way. The grilled marinated pineapple was extra fragrant, sweet and tart at the same time. And the Amazake ice cream paired with grilled pineapples were a match made in heaven. The alcoholic notes of the ice cream interwines beautifully with the caramelised sweet and tangy notes of the pineapple.
The chef really saved the best for the last.
Our Verdict
Before leaving, they actually hand us a rice ball made using the leftover claypot rice. That would be my mid-day snack for the next day. The rice still tasted good and but it was rather oily.
Overall, this meal was a memorable one even though there were a couple of dishes which did not quite meet our expectations. But there are outstanding dishes which are enough to make me want to make another trip back to Iru Den.
It is also a pity that we did not get to chat with the chef himself. It would have been a great if he was there to explain his inspirations behind each dish. Or perhaps the staff could have shared how each dish comes about.
IRU DEN
Address: 27 Scotts Road, Singapore 228222
Nearest MRT station: Newton MRT station (about 10-mins walk from the station to Iru Den).
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