Salted & Hung
La fête nationale de Singapour vient de passer et je réfléchissais à mon identité singapourienne, à ma place à Singapour et surtout, à la bonne chance que j'ai d'être née à Singapour.
Je suis un produit du système méritocratique à Singapour, et c'est pourquoi j'y crois. Si j'étais née ailleurs dans le monde, comme une femme chinoise sans foyer stable, soutien familial ou richesse, je n'aurais pas réussi comme je l'ai fait. Mon enfance était marquée par de nombreux abus et j'étais sans-abri pendant la majeure partie de ma vingtaine. Ma vie maintenant est grâce à un travail acharné récompensé par la méritocratie, et à la charité et à la gentillesse de mes amis et de leurs parents.
J'ai fait beaucoup de choses imprudentes quand j'étais jeune: j'ai trop fait la fête, j'ai trop bu, j'ai fait des choses très stupides, et j'ai pris trop de risque. Mais parce que Singapour est très sécurisé, j'étais toujours en sécurité et il n'y avait aucun risque que quelque chose se passe qui soit trop grave de non-retour. Je ne me suis jamais inquiété de marcher seul au milieu de la nuit dans une rue sombre (oui, même dans les rues de nombre pair de Geylang), portant une très petite jupe et un haut court sans bretelles. Je n'ai jamais eu à m'inquiéter de m'évanouir, je rentrerais toujours en toute sécurité. Je ne pense pas que j'aurais eu cette bonne chance si j'étais née ailleurs. Cette sécurité incroyable est "la beauté" de Singapour.
En plus, c'est grâce au multiracialisme de Singapour que je suis allée des écoles avec des jeunes de toutes races, où j'ai appris à comprendre et à respecter les différences de nos cultures, de nos races et de nos religions. Grâce à l'engagement de Singapour en faveur de l'harmonie raciale et religieuse, j'ai pu partager ma culture et avoir un échange ouvert d'idées religieuses avec même les musulmans les plus fidèles et les plus dévots des hindous, dans un espace sûr, sans jugement ou intolérance. Ce n'est pas un mince exploit, considérant que je suis allé dans une école chrétienne. (je comprends qu'une partie de mon expérience a été due au privilège de la majorité chinois, et chacun n'a pas le même privilège ou la bonne chance d'avoir rencontré des gens aussi ouvertes d'esprit et gentilles que moi, mais c'est mon hommage à Singapour et une représentation de mon expérience, alors, pas d'attaques s'il vous plait)
Bien sûr, ce n'est pas un système parfait, et nous pouvons faire plus pour garantir que les mêmes opportunités soient données à chacun. Nous pouvons faire plus pour réduire l'inégalité de revenu. Nous pouvons faire plus pour aider les personnes désavantagées de notre société. Nous pouvons faire plus pour éliminer le racisme et les microagressions auxquels sont confrontées les minorités.
Mais nous sommes un pays jeune, nous avons le potentiel à croître, de nous améliorer, d'être meilleurs, et j'ai de l'espoir à Singapour, dans notre peuple. Et pour le moment, je voudrais exprimer ma reconnaissance et mon amour pour cette petite nation insulaire, ma maison Singapour. Je ne voudrais pas appeler ailleurs chez moi. Allez-y, et bon anniversaire, mon cher Singapour!
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The Unlisted Collection's modern Australian restaurant Salted & Hung has been on my to-eat list since forever, post Beck's glowing review of the same. I don't know why I took so long to visit the Purvis Street stalwart, because we pick up takeout from Garibaldi opposite all the time; it may well be its name, I always thought I'd have to dine wilderness-style à la Bear Grylls, eating bush meat fresh off the day's hunt. Its nose-to-tail philosophy wasn't exactly enticing either, I'm an incorrigibly wasteful capitalist.
Boy were my preconceived notions badly misplaced, our initiation to Salted & Hung's offerings was exceptional. Dishes were inventive, flavours were cohesive, the degustation-only dinner was a right slam dunk. And notwithstanding the somewhat pretentious course names, we were surprised to find the cuisine at Salted & Hung unaffected and grounded in simple, familiar tastes.
We were even more surprised that the 10-course degustation was priced a very wallet-friendly $138+. This makes Salted & Hung very possibly the most affordable fancy dining spot in all of Singapore. For this reason alone (dining here doesn't require one to eat grass for the rest of the month), Salted & Hung now makes one of my top 2 favourite restaurants, the other being Meta.
Service was, for the most part, hospitable (they'd even accommodated our request to supplement with the wagyu pastrami sandwich, which is purportedly only available off the takeout menu) but the monotonic delivery of the components of each dish was barely decipherable through our servers' masks, we thought it would have been a less futile endeavour to have jotted that down in the miniature menus gifted to us at the end of the meal.
Also, be advised to allocate at least 2.5 hours for dinner, ours took us well past 11pm but we hardly noticed, we were too busy catching up with our dinner date King.
Dinner kicked off with a trio of amuse bouche, beginning with Bafun uni topped off a 30-Day Fish Soy Panna Cotta. Pickled radish, kelp oil, yuzu accents, and a nori cracker finished off this delightful teaser.
I was bemused when the server called this course 'The Cheeseburger", comprising wagyu tartare, pickles and raw onion rings and smoked ketchup in a cute little tartlet. I couldn't imagine how this could taste anything like the burgers I know. At most, this could maybe be a riff on beef tartare? But wowza, this turned out like cheeseburger in a mouthful, it was brilliant how the chef made raw beef taste like a charred, cooked, beef patty. Truly one of the most delicious surprises of the night.
The Fish & Chips was like the most fancy iteration of this classic bar grub, with chick pea chips dotted with pea puree, topped with amur caviar and dill, and dusted with vinegar powder. Despite not having any actual fish in this, it was scrumptious!
So apparently, the IPA sourdough at Salted & Hung is renowned for being the best in the land, and I have to agree. Its name, 'Time, Love & Patience', is probably the secret ingredient to the formula of this wonderful confection. I'm not a big fan of butter, but the unctuous wakame butter was so glorious, we had to ask for seconds, having glossed over the whipped lard with chilli oil. It's not to say the lard wasn't great, it's just that the seaweed butter was that crazy awesome.
The 'Treasures of the Sea' was an exquisite scallop carpaccio, caviar, yuzu sake, chilli granita, fennel flowers and fresh dill. Delicate and subtle flavours abound, so as not to overwhelm the scallops.
The 'Surf & Turf' featured a juicy local crayfish and a blanket of housemade lardo, while lemonade gel and charcuterie broth lent balance and heft.
The 'Heart & Soul' was a charcuterie platter highlighting meats cured in-house: cured back fat lardo with truffle honey, wagyu bresaola, and sakura pork collar coppa. Absolutely smashing.
"The Whole Fish' was a delectable illustration of the restaurant's waste-not, want-not approach to cooking. Local pearl grouper was used for every part of this dish, its body was the dish's focus, its bones made a crumb dusting the aioli, as well as an infusion for the soy sauce and charcoal emulsion broth, its skin puffed into a cracker and topped with kelp cream, pea, ikura & dill. Positively genius use of, well, the whole fish!
The 'Homeland' sparked a conversation about eating weird foods/cute animals. As much as I think kangaroos are adorable AF, it is a meat regularly consumed Down Under. I once had a Swede ask me if I think the Covid-19 pandemic will cause the Chinese to stop eating disgusting shit like bats and dogs and rats, and I responded, who among us can really qualify as arbiter of what's weird/disgusting and what's "normal/regular"? The French eat rabbit and snail, the Norwegians eat reindeer and whale, the Japanese eat horse and dolphin, the Italians eat maggot-ridden cheese, and the Filipinos eat balut; to each culture, its foods are regular, normal, and sometimes considered delicacies even, but to another, it's weird AF. As long as we continue to eat animals, I don't think any of us have the moral high ground on which to slam another culture's foods.
That said, a friend asked what does kangaroo taste like, and I think it's a cross between duck and venison, very lean, and less gamey or full-bodied than, say, a hearty meat like beef. 'The Homeland' was a well-treated hunk of meat, lightly seared so it remains tender, and complemented with a robust jus and punctuated with a bold beetroot essence and cauliflower puree.
The 'Meat, Bone & Fire' was the finale main of a perfectly pink, aromatic charred wagyu tri-tip rounded off with pickled maitake, onion skin ash, caramelised onion, a beef fat confit-ed leek, and drizzled with a pear & shitake reduction, bone marrow butter, and herb oil. Sumptuous.
So, how we managed to wrangle the restaurant to serve us a dish off the takeout menu was an exercise in persistence and utter shamelessness. We'd initially called the restaurant the day before to enquire if we could supplement our degustation with a few items off their takeaway menu, and the answer was an emphatic no. But we are outrageously insolent, and so we reiterated our request when we were ordering, lamenting the waste of an opportunity to eat those takehome dishes piping hot in the restaurant. We compounded that by sycophantically oohed and aahed all through the dinner (we weren't lying, the degustation was amazing), and after the beef course, we put on our most gratingly whiny voices and said we could definitely go another round of degustation because us gluttons were still a teensy weensy smidge hungry. And that's when our obliging server went to convince the chef to very generously let us add on another course for dinner. #yaytosmallwinsinlife #beingshamelesspays
I'm remorseless that we are as shameless and persistent as we were, the Blackmore Wagyu Pastrami Sandwich ($22) was incredible. We'd asked for the mustard mayo on the side, none of us were fans of mayo, or mustard, and the sandwich was amazing on its own. We've picked this up for takeout and its magic got lost a little in transit because the bread got a little soggy, invariably because the meats were so juicy, notwithstanding that traveling door-to-door only took about 15 minutes. Still, if you can cajole the chef to serve this up in the restaurant, please do. Best pastrami sando I've ever had in my life (katz's deli who???)
The 'Bramble Patch' was the first of 2 desserts, and served as a palate cleanser with its ice strawberry yoghurt, mochi blobs and meringue accents. I didn't think I'd like yoghurt, but the piquancy was countered by the sweetness of the fruit, and worked remarkably well.
The 'Gold n Gaytime' with ash chocolate, umami and toffee was like a re-imagining of Violet Crumble, which chocolate bar I always seem to crave for and indulge whenever I'm in Oz. Loved loved loved this.
The finisher was a petit four (or to be precise, petit trois) of a caramel Anzac biscuit, an Indian snack and a mini choux puff. The first time I had an Anzac biscuit (in Australia, no less), I couldn't understand the fuss, but Salted & Hung's pastry chef's rendition is top-notch, we've bought her addictive cookies from the takeaway menu to junk on in front of the telly.
Salted & Hung
12 Purvis Street
Tel: 6358 3130
Open Fridays to Sundays from 11.30am to 2.30pm for lunch; 6pm to 10.30pm for dinner;
Tuesdays to Thursdays from 5pm to 10.30pm for dinner only;
Closed on Mondays
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