Delicious Thai Fusion Fine Dining at Tangerine, RWS/ESPA.

👍 Interesting (and mostly delicious) Thai/Fusion Fine Dining. Good service.
👎 Mediocre desserts. Location is really inconvenient for public transport.

Resorts World Sentosa has a host of restaurants that the darling and I have never visited: mostly because Sentosa is kind of annoying to get to for those of us with no wheels. So when we heard about a Thai Fusion / Fine Dining place there named Tangerine, we decided to make a reservation and head on over to check it out!

Tangerine is located inside ESPA, the health and wellness complex located along the western edges of RWS. This makes it really quite out of the way, but persevere and you'll soon be seated in a comfortable, quiet dining room surrounded by greenery and man-made water features. It's a comfortable place to be, if perhaps not particularly posh-feeling.


The meal starts off with warm, freshly-baked spring onion brioche, served with an amazing lemongrass and basil dip. I liked the buttery fluffiness of the brioche, but the lemon-y, minty basil pesto was the star of the show. A perfect way to whet the appetite.


For my starter, I chose the off-menu King Salmon Pad Thai. Strips of raw King Salmon (I did not ask if it was farmed or line-caught), tossed in pad thai flavourings and condiments. The lime juice, fish sauce, and cilantro flavours - with the texture from the chopped peanuts and slight heat from the chili flakes - complemented the fish perfectly. I would consider a return visit for this starter alone.


The darling's starter - Pork Manaow (Pork loin with chili lime dressing with flowers and vegetables from the garden) - wasn't quite as accomplished. While the dish is really pretty, we thought that the chili lime dressing was a little too strong, and flavour-wise overpowered pretty much the entire dish.


For my hot starter I chose the Bamboo Clam and Angel Hair Pasta, with Mexican Tarragon and Lump Fish Roe with Seaweed Sauce. This was a pretty good dish - al dente pasta with just the right briny salt from the lumpfish roe. I would've appreciated a little more flavouring otherwise, though, as the bamboo clam and flowers were a little bland on their own.


The other hot starter we shared was the Yuba with Organic Onsen Egg (Japanese Bean Curd Skin, Hon Shimeji Mushrooms and Ginger Flower with Garlic Parmesan Foam). The use of the bean curd skin as pasta was quite interesting, and the onsen egg and parmesan foam tying everything together as a luxurious, creamy, "pasta" sauce.


The standout dish of the day for me was the Beef Short Rib and Foie Gras, served with Long Beans, Heirloom Tomato, Spicy Shallots and Cilantro with Yuzu Dressing. The beef was slow-cooked to glorious, fatty, melt-in-your-mouth luxury, and perfect on its own. I also really liked how the accompanying vegetables (especially the long beans) and cilantro/yuzu sauce gave the dish a noticeable Thai flavour profile, which is something I haven't had the fortune to try in fine dining restaurants in the past.


We weren't quite as enamored with the Pan-roasted Farm Seabass though. Served with Summer Pea and King Oyster Mushroom with Citrus Sauce, the fish itself was cooked very well - nice, crispy skin, and a moist, firm flesh. However we weren't so convinced by the foam, the texture of which - in our opinions - really distracted too much from the fish and the overall dish.


For desserts, we first shared a Madagascar Chocolate and Tofu Mousse, served with Thai Farm Honey and Pineapple. The chocolate mousse (couldn't taste any tofu flavour) was ... decent, but overall it really was quite a simple dessert.


Likewise, the Jasmine Panna Cotta (Rice Puff, Dragon Fruit and Berries with Sweet Potato Crisp) had decent execution, but in comparison with the savoury dishes was perhaps a tad bit underwhelming and unambitious.


The 4-course lunch above is priced at sgd58++ per person (with an sgd8 and sgd5 supplement for the bamboo clam pasta and beef short rib respectively), which is fairly good value. If you're a MasterCard holder you really should head on over to their 1-for-1 dining deals page (running til 30th June 2019), which brings the price down to an extremely attractive sgd29++ per person!

Drinks extra, of course.

Tangerine is at ESPA, Resorts World Sentosa. It's probably easiest to just drive or take a taxi/grabcar here, but if you're a staunch supporter of public transport, it's about a 10 minute walk from the huge Universal Studios Globe. Non-halal.

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