Star Anise

I’ll never be a food blogger. I have no pictures, or even notes, to describe the food we had at Star Anise last night, and unfortunately the restaurant itself doesn’t have a website I can rely on.

Star Anise is quite tucked away in suburban Shenton Park (there is a Wikipedia entry?!) – we would never have just stumbled on the place, had we not set out to go there. The venue itself is a refurbished house, I think, with a number of small dining rooms. We sat in probably the largest room, with about four other occupied tables in it. That whisk with the star anise in it (in picture, from De Groots) , is actually a large wooden sculpture that was in the middle of the room. I was quite surprised at how busy the place was, for a Tuesday evening.

A nice touch was the shot glass-sized serve of chicken and sweet corn soup that arrived before our entrées. There was a slight tinge of maybe cinnamon to the soup, which had been whisked and was so frothy and light M said it was “like drinking the head of a beer”. I don’t think he liked it as much as I did, but I thought that the lightness meant that the strong flavours were not cloying or too rich.

M had pigeon with foie gras and gingerbread as his entr̩e, while I had the Mahor, seared scallops, caramelized duck, peanuts & pineapple. I have no idea what Mahor is, but the scallops were lovely Рperfectly done, and the combination of flavours worked really well. M enjoyed his pigeon and particularly liked the foie gras and the gingerbread. I had a taste of the foie gras Рooh la la, so rich!

We both chose to have the tom yum snapper. I think M might have liked to have had the roast suckling pig, but unfortunately it was popular and they were all out. Full marks to the waiter for telling us as soon as we were given the menus – it’s always very annoying when they only tell you after you’ve made your choice.

Our fish was served in big white dishes. Almost as soon as the fish was placed on our table, two waiters emerged at exactly the same time to pour tom yum soup out of what looked like sake bottles over the fish. The snapper was served with a few vegetables – jicama and winter melon are two that I remember. Quite delicious, and we even used the Chinese spoons that were supplied to scoop up some of the clear tom yum soup.

It’s a pity that I was (am) still recovering from my cough and seem to have a diminished appetite at the moment. I didn’t feel like any alcohol (a glass of wine might have been nice otherwise) and didn’t want any dessert either. I think M would have liked to have tried the cheese platter, which did sound good – the roquefort in particular sounded nice, and there was a goat’s cheese and a ‘triple milk’ cheese as well.

All in all I enjoyed Star Anise, although M says he prefers the atmosphere of Must Wine Bar or Jackson’s. Perfect excuse for us to visit those two fine dining establishments sometime soon!

Categories: food, StarAnise, restaurant, wedding, anniversary