What to Order at a Japanese-Middle Eastern Restaurant

Fusion menus create a specific kind of paralysis. You recognise every word individually — hummus, ikura, kombu, tahini — and none of the combinations, so you cannot tell which dishes are the point and which are supporting cast. Ordering badly at a fusion restaurant usually means ordering timidly: three safe things that never touch each other.

This is a walkthrough of how to order at a Japanese-Middle Eastern table, written from ours. Every dish named below is on the Habibi-san menu as of 14 August 2026 — we re-checked the live menu the morning this went up. We have not put prices in, because our printed menu does not carry them online and we would rather say nothing than guess; note that everything is subject to a 10% service charge, with no GST.

The structure: build in three layers

Do not order dish by dish. Order in layers, in this sequence — it is the only ordering advice here that genuinely matters.

Mezze — three or four dips and small cold things, plus bread. This is the foundation and it stays on the table all night.
Small plates — one or two, to break up the dips with texture and temperature.
One biggie — a single large charcoal dish for the table to share.

For two people: three mezze, one small plate, one biggie. For four: five mezze, two small plates, two biggies. Scale the mezze faster than the mains, not the other way round.

Layer one: the mezze that show you what the kitchen is doing

Chickpea hummus with macadamia tahini and ikura. If you order one thing to understand the whole restaurant, order this. Tahini made with macadamia instead of sesame alone is richer and rounder; salmon roe on top adds salinity and a burst of texture. It is the concept in a single bowl — a Levantine staple re-engineered with a Japanese ingredient rather than merely garnished with one.

Babaganoush with kinnogomadare. Smoked eggplant, then kinnogomadare — a golden sesame sauce — with roasted sesame seeds, tempura crisp and togarashi. Two smoke-and-sesame traditions doing the same job from opposite directions.

Matbucha. Stewed roma tomatoes and peppers with browned butter, kombu dashi and nori. A Moroccan dish given a Japanese umami spine. The one most people do not order and then wish they had.

Labne. House-strained yoghurt with smoked shimeji, taklia, garlic crisps and peppermint. The cool, sharp counterweight to everything smoky — get it if your other picks are all rich.

Pita. Ordered per piece, charred directly over the charcoal. Order it at the start and again halfway through; reheated bread is not the same food.

Two more worth knowing: fire-tossed edamame with shiro miso and confit garlic butter, which is the least fussy thing on the menu and disappears fastest, and cassava and taramasalata — twice-cooked cassava chippies with housemade labne, mentaiko XO and tobiko, where mentaiko and taramasalata turn out to be the same idea in two languages, both being cured fish roe whipped into a dip.

Layer two: the small plate to always order

Habibi’s Brussel sprouts. This is the most-mentioned dish in almost everything written about us, and we did not put it there — reviewers did. Kinnogomadare again, red cabbage pickles, jalapeños and shredded bonito that moves in the heat coming off the plate. Order it even if you have opinions about sprouts.

The other small plate worth your attention is kibbeh nayyeh — Margra lamb tartare with shio kombu, wheat, wasabi ponzu vinaigrette and salted Cambodian black pepper. Kibbeh nayyeh is a genuine Levantine raw-lamb preparation; the wasabi ponzu is what makes it ours. If raw lamb is a step too far, the wood-smoked Norwegian salmon salata with orange-wafu vinaigrette does a similar job with less commitment.

Layer three: pick one biggie, not three

Everything here comes off charcoal, and one is genuinely enough for a table that has ordered its mezze properly.

Lebanese charcoal chicken — spatchcocked, forty-five minutes over the coals, green harissa and a garlic-yuzu toum. The default choice for a first visit and the dish that best explains why we built the kitchen around fire.
Mangalica pork collar chop and beans — fennel spice, wasabi and butter bean mash, charred vinegared radicchio, tonkotsu jus. The one to order if you want the richest thing on the menu.
Atlantic seabass — yuzu beurre blanc, miso butter, ikura, crisp skin. The lighter end.
Margra lamb rump — méchoui spice rub, cucumber and ginger tzatziki, caraway. The most straightforwardly Middle Eastern of the mains.
Angus ribeye MB4+ (300g, grain-finished) or Blackmore full blood wagyu karubi MB9+ (200g, 600-day grain-fed), both with truffle ponzu jus — the splurge end, where the marbling grade is doing most of the work.

If you would rather not decide: FEEEEED ME

Our omakase, minimum two guests — a series of dishes chosen by the chefs, and you can still add anything you spotted on the menu. This is the honest recommendation for a first visit with a group, or for any table that has spent ten minutes failing to agree. It also solves the specific fusion-menu problem this post is about: you get the combinations the kitchen actually wants you to eat, in the order it wants you to eat them.

A few practical notes

We are not halal. There is pork on the menu and a full bar. Middle Eastern theming raises the question often enough that it deserves a straight answer.
Tell us about allergies and dietary restrictions when you sit down, not when the food arrives — most of the mezze can flex, but not after it is plated.
Desserts have been rebuilt around the current menu: muhallebi with morello cherries and yamasa soy caramel, a chocolate kataifi tart with Valrhona 66%, and matcha-misu made with Sakari matcha sake. If you only have room for one, the matcha-misu is the one that fits the concept best.
Drinks are worth a decision, not a default. The signature list runs from Olive or Nothing, a bourbon highball with smoked olives, to Ume & Bitter with gin, gentian and umeshu. There is also a small Macedonian wine section, which is genuinely unusual in Singapore. The drinks menu is here.

Where this fits

For the wider context — what Japanese dining in Singapore actually covers, and where fusion sits inside it — start with our full guide to Japanese food in Singapore. If you want dish-level recommendations across the city rather than at one table, the honest shortlist of the best Japanese food in Singapore covers that ground.

The complete, current menu is here, the gallery shows what actually arrives at the table, and we are at 29 Hamilton Road, Tuesday to Sunday from 5pm, with brunch on Saturday and Sunday. Book a table.

Everything above is the dinner menu. The weekend brunch runs on a different card, with plated mains and its own drinks, and we have read that one line by line, prices included.

Related reading: for the background on the dishes themselves — otsumami, the roe family, wagyu grades and kinnogomadare — start with Beyond Sushi: Japanese Dishes You Have to Try.

If you would rather compare us against the rest of the field first, we wrote an honest survey of Japanese fusion restaurants in Singapore — sorted by which two cuisines are actually meeting, and including the places that get called fusion but are not.

One more source worth reading before you order: we went back through five years of our own reviews to see which of these dishes people actually name, and which ones the write-ups still praise that we no longer serve at Hamilton Road — that is what reviewers keep ordering.