Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Equinox at Swissôtel The Stamford: A romantic restaurant with an amazing view!

Let's get this out of the way first: Equinox is probably the restaurant with the best view in all of Singapore (If you know of a food joint with a better view we'd love to hear it in the comments). The magnificent view makes it a pretty romantic place to dine at, although the dining room can be a little loud and boisterous.

The darling and I are more interested in how good the food is, though, so we place our orders and hope it lives up to the view!

Equinox Restaurant Singapore Night View

First up, a complimentary canapé. I think it's testament to just how crappy a food writer I am that I don't remember what ingredient was used to make the chip. Oops! I do recall that it had a miso paste and a block of yuzu jelly, and that it was pretty good though!

Bread-wise we get a so-so slice of (cold) sourdough toast and some unsalted butter.

Equinox Restaurant Singapore Canapes

The first of our starters is out next: Burrata ($22) - Iberico Ham sitting on fresh cheese, with green peas, lemon, and rosemary bread crumbs. Burrata's got an amazing creamy texture, but can be a little bland, so we're pretty happy with the accompanying salt and fat from the ham.

Equinox Restaurant Singapore Burrata

The Seared Foie Gras ($34) is a hefty portion of fattened goose liver, accompanied by roasted apricots, ginger marmalade, and toasted seed granola. As always, it's hard to get foie gras really wrong, so we're quite satisfied (although the liver could have perhaps benefited from a stronger sear).

Equinox Restaurant Singapore Foie Gras

On to the main courses, then, starting with a 300gm Ranger's Valley, Black Onyx, Grain Fed New York Strip Steak ($90, marble score 3), served with roasted bone marrow. The steak was fine: cooked to our requested medium-rare temperature, but without that crust that you get from dedicated steakhouses like Morton's. It was also a tad bit under-seasoned on its own, but that's probably because it's served with your choice of sauce (we went with the black truffle butter).

You also get a choice of side dish: We chose the mac & cheese, which was nice, cheesy and creamy.

Equinox Restaurant Singapore New York Strip Steak

Our second choice of main course was the Lamb Saddle ($70) with provencal terrine, green olives, spinach and tomato fondue, also requested medium rare. The lamb was juicy and tender and terrifically delicious with the gravy; sadly we weren't as mesmerized by the (in our opinion) too-strong tomato flavour in the vegetables.

Oh and one common minor criticism: The knives that we had were really due for some sharpening.

Equinox Restaurant Singapore Lamb Saddle

Being quite stuffed we decided to share something tart after all that meat: The Blackberry Trifle ($22) which comes with mascarpone jelly, meringue, and elderflower ice cream. It was quite delicious and also rather pretty looking.

Equinox Restaurant Singapore Blackberry Trifle

To finish - petit fours (caramel chocolates) which were really a tad bit too sweet.

Equinox Restaurant Singapore Petit Fours

As Equinox doesn't serve free water (boo), we paid $5 each for warm, filtered water - bringing the total to $248++ for two. In our opinions the food and the view don't justify the price tag if you pay full price. However, you can get a pretty nice discount via via various promos (e.g. OCBC 25% off, Amex Platinum 50% off with 2 diners) which increases the value proposition by quite a bit.

Equinox Restaurant is on the 70th Floor of Swissôtel The Stamford. Reservations recommended; Non-halal. Oh, do note that the restaurant levies a s$20++ surcharge for securing a table by the window.