Category Blog

Four axes that decide which kind of room you want tonight, and where our own two venues sit on them - including one that splits the definition down the middle.

What kanpai means, why nobody drinks before the toast, and the pouring rules that go with it - plus the one part of it worth borrowing at a table in Jalan Besar.

The small dish you did not order and cannot send back. What otoshi is, what it costs, whether you can refuse it, and what happens instead at a Japanese-Middle Eastern izakaya in Singapore.

The last two drinks on our cocktail card, and the only two that lead with FRUITY. A lychee martini with sake in it, an apple highball from Japan's apple prefecture, and one ingredient our own card refuses to identify.

Gentian, pink perilla, matcha sake and a hazelnut that turns up in exactly two places on our menus. What is in Ume & Bitter and Matcha Milk, and what our own paperwork will not tell you.

What is actually in the S.S.S. and Habibi's Espresso Martini, read off our cocktail card: the builds, the printed tasting notes, the four-tag flavour profiles, and the typo the menu makes one line below the correct spelling.

Two drinks off our cocktail card, quoted exactly as printed: a highball with no whisky in it, and a mojito with whey in it.

Alcohol percentage, calories, storage and shelf life, answered with the trade body’s own words, and honest about the numbers our own menu does not print.

We pour no arak, and we are writing about it anyway. How a Levantine anise spirit and Japanese sake solved the same dinner-table problem from opposite ends.

A chef’s-choice menu means ordering a drink before you know what it is for. Which bottles on our list survive an unknown sequence, and why we do not run a pairing flight.