Seasonal ingredients are where it’s all at in the Modern European restaurant

Cure is all about the little things. The 40-seater, fine-dining restaurant along Keong Saik Road is the perfect place to savour cosy, intimate moments with your loved ones. Designed by award-winning, Singapore-based firm Weijenberg, each table at Cure (most of which seats two to four people) has its own spotlight, while the rest of the restaurant is dimmed, allowing diners to be in their own world. Likewise, every dish is served in bite-sized portions. Not only does this make room for plenty of chitchat, it also allows for a well-paced, five-course meal that doesn’t leave you struggling to leave the table.

Like nearly every other restaurant in the city, Cure focuses on using seasonal ingredients. For the autumn menu, chef-owner Andrew Walsh combines eco-dining with artful gastronomy, inspired by local flavours and recipes. It also incorporates local ingredients such as locally farmed chicken liver pate in his savoury rendition of Linzer biscuits, which features parmesan shortbread. The Citizen Farm’s Caesar Salad, a crunchy mix of chicken skin, cheese and greens, also uses locally grown tarragon, purslane, wood sorrel and micro basil. And who can forget the Singapore Laksa? Instead of thick rice vermicelli, you chew on sous vide squid hiding beneath foamy laksa froth.

Every little dish packs a punch at Cure and the snacks are no different. It goes all the way down to the presentation of the dish as well, which injects a generous dose of visual and tactile fun when digging into the plates. Cure Egg is one prime example, where a chicken egg is sous vide and placed back in its shell that lies on top of a gorgeous, rustic nest. New to the menu is the Foie Gras Custard, encrusted with a layer of cinnamon sugar and decorated with sliced plums and biscuit crumbs.

After enticing and awakening your taste buds with a lineup of off-menu snacks, you’re treated to petite servings of entree dishes. The red snapper, Iberico pork loin, beef short rib pastrami, and roast pigeon, when served in succession, make up the four steps to get to culinary heaven. Each dish boasts such bold flavours that a small bite is enough to satisfy. Walsh also ensures none of the leftovers from the recipes are wasted, incorporating them into the dish in the most ingenious ways.

Adopting a root-to-stem cooking philosophy, Walsh wastes no part of a potato when making Potato, Seaweed and Soil – a dish that is part of another new five-course, plant-based menu. Inspired by the 19th-century potato famine of his home country, the Irish chef juxtaposes the softness of the mashed potato with the crunchiness of the potato skin and the savouriness of the main dish with the sweetness of the chocolate soil.

Taking his efforts towards sustainability to the next level, the restaurant features a top-notch curation of organic, biodynamic wines that come from artisanal vineyards in Italy, New Zealand, Austria, and South Africa, some of which date back to the 17th century. Some proprietors even go the length of washing its soil to empty it of the agricultural chemicals that are used to grow most of the food we eat in a day.

For citrus cocktail lovers, the Cosmo De Cure (the fine dining bistro’s remix of the classic cosmopolitan) makes for a delicious companion to your meal. The night ends with the most saccharine of conclusions. While the Kiwi pre-dessert refreshes the tongue with lemon granite and smoked local honey, the pandan and coconut-infused dark chocolate treat offers a sweet contrast – a personal favourite that no dessert fiend should miss.

Cure
21 Keong Saik Road
Singapore 089128
Tel: +65 6221 2189