Ponzu is on our menu three times and in almost every Japanese restaurant in Singapore, usually in a small dish beside something grilled or raw. Ask what it is and most people will say “citrus soy sauce”, which is half…
Yuzu is on half the dessert menus and cocktail lists in Singapore, and it is on ours three times. Yet most people who order it could not pick the fruit out of a bowl of citrus, and the usual description…
Every few weeks someone at the counter asks the question politely, and every few weeks someone online asks it less politely: is any of this authentic? A hummus with ikura on it. A Levantine raw-lamb dish dressed with wasabi ponzu.…
The green paste that arrives beside a plate of sushi is, more often than not, not wasabi. That is not a hot take or a piece of gatekeeping — it is a manufacturing fact, and once you know what the…
We have already written about why we put a whole chicken over the coals for 45 minutes, which is a question about technique. This is the other question, and it is more interesting: of all the things the Levant cooks…
Tahini is the most-used ingredient in Middle Eastern cooking that almost nobody can describe. It is in the cupboard. It is in the hummus. It is half the actual name of the dish. And ask ten people what it is…
A Middle Eastern menu is mostly transliterated Arabic, and transliteration is generous — the same dish can be spelled four ways on four cards down the same street. This is the short list of words worth knowing before you order,…
They arrive in the same shape of bowl, at the same point in the meal, with the same bread. Both are beige. Both have a pool of olive oil in the middle. If you have ever pointed at one and…
Three words turn up on Singapore menus as though they were decorative variations on “Japanese grill”. They are not. They describe three different evenings, with different animals, different fires and different people doing the cooking — and the quickest way…
Both of our kitchens cook meat on a stick over fire, and they inherited the idea from opposite ends of the same continent. On a plate the two look like the same object. They are not doing the same job.…