Dining At Michelin Star Restaurants In Singapore

On our trip to Singapore this month I took a fancy  on restaurants with Michelin stars.  This time I was more conscious of them that I did some readings and learned  more about the Michelin Guide and how restaurants can acquire a Michelin star.  

In the early 1900's, Michelin, a French tyre manufacturer came up with a Michelin guide published annually as a manual for car owners.  It focused on trouble  shooting and maintenance, maps, location of petrol filling stations and other information relevant to road trips so people were encouraged to travel.  In so doing, they thought it would enhance car sales and boost their business.  Included therein is a list of food stops for drivers which were marked with one, two or three stars.

From my readings,the prestigious Michelin star has evolved a bit differently from its infancy.  Nowadays it has become a status symbol for restaurants who earned these coveted stars.  In fact in the case of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay being stripped of his two Michelin stars in his New York restaurant has been frequently mentioned in my readings.   "It felt like losing a girl friend, that you want to get her back", said Ramsay. 

They say that there are a select 120 secret inspectors/reviewers who are schooled and expert in the culinary field and possess the discriminate palate to appreciate food.  

They cover about 40,000 restaurants worldwide, each one dining at 240 restaurants per year; visiting them every 18 months for evaluation.  They pay to dine like an ordinary customer so they blend in the crowd and remain incognito while doing their jobs.   

It takes at least four visits of consistent satisfactory observation and only after consultation with two of the world-wide Executives before a single star can be awarded ; 10 visits for two stars and so on.  This guide focused mostly in Europe and only later in the United States. 

In recent years, Asian countries have been included; among them are Japan, Hongkong, Macao and the latest is Singapore.  In 2016, two Singaporean hawker food stalls were awarded a single star for their delicious and affordable meals.   From there, many restaurants were awarded the Michelin star in Singapore that it warranted an Apps, a guide for Singapore restaurants with the Michelin stars.  

Our son brought us to lunch at Nabe Siezan, a 2-Michelin star Japanese restaurant for its Dashi soup (fish broth). We ordered their bestsellers;  

the wagyu beef 

This photo is lifted from Nabe's website

the Sea Bream  with dashi rice.  

I'd say that the dishes were not cheap. 

The Kam's Roast Restaurant is a spin off of the Michelin star restaurant in Hongkong, the Kam's Roast Goose.  In Singapore, Kam's Roast serve star-quality roast duck instead of goose using the same ingredients and method because they couldn't find a reliable goose supplier in Singapore.  Kam's Roast is still working on earning a star but the food is already Michelin-star worthy. 

Kam's Roast also serve roast chicken and Char Sui Pork.  Our son ordered all three dishes for us to taste and they were all great. 

The high quality of Dim Sum at affordable prices for the masses to enjoy is Tim Ho Wan restaurant's pride for acquiring it's Michelin star.  

There are the big four heavenly King  in the hierarchy of their dim-sum; pan fried radish cake, steamed egg cake,  bean curd of pork and shrimp and the baked ban with BBQ pork.  The latter seems to be a great favorite for many. 

Among the four, I only tasted the baked ban with BBQ Pork (their best seller) when our younger daughter bought some  for us to taste the last time we were in Singapore.  

Here we were at Tsuta Ramen, another Michelin-star restaurant.  Our son-in-law and younger daughter brought us there last September to try their Shoyu Ramen complimented with truffle oil that earned them the Michelin star. 

In the photo above we were waiting for our ramen being prepared by two chefs in front of us. 

Note that a Michelin star is awarded to a restaurant because of the quality, authenticity and exceptional good taste of a dish and nothing to do with the place and its ambiance.  However, having a Michelin star is a crowd drawer and before long expansion and beatification is inevitable.  

There are more restaurants with Michelin Stars that our children would like to bring us to but Jim said "enough of star restaurants".  So on our last night our younger daughter and son-in-law brought us to NamNam at Plaza Singapora for Vietnamese Pho Noodles.   The mint, spring onions and cilantro in the soup  were so refreshing and served with a generous amount of tender beef.  Now, I would rate that with a Michelin star. 

During my trips to Singapore I had the opportunity to dine in many restaurants,  (our children make sure we experience a new one most of the time) I believe that there are more deserving of that coveted star. 

Sometime ago, the Michelin Guide was said to be biased with French Cuisine, this maybe due to accessibility and their food orientation. Wouldn't you wonder why a tyre manufacturer is critiquing food at restaurants around the world?

Having tasted a few Michelin star dishes, I have to say that most of them are great but some are not to my liking.  Maybe my palate is not sophisticated enough  to appreciate a variety of dishes.   Still, I believe that if "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", then delicious food is in the tongue of the taster. 

Today, a week after this was published, I learned further that restaurants having Michelin Stars is not really all that great afterall. Just recently, I read that Sebastian Bras, a French chef gave up his three stars and requested not to be included in the 2018 Michelin guide because he can no longer stand the pressure of being inspected or rated everytime he puts out a new dish. There were also a few other chefs who dropped out of the guide for the same reason. 

Staying Fit Is A Challenge That Can't Be Ignored

Like George Burns, the world's most famous centenarian who passed away two months after he turned 100 years old, I'll also say the same.

"Had I known that I'd live up to this age, I should have taken better care of myself".  

But who can really say how long one will live in this valley of tears?  Both my parents passed in their early 60's so I thought that I'd  also live up to about the same age.  Logical, right? 

Though my parents gave us balanced meals, their love for cakes, pastries and other sweets greatly influenced my growing up years.  That explains my fondness for bread and sweets, two diet no-no's.  But I couldn't blame my parents, they gave us what they knew was good for us. 

The holiday season was not yet over, that was between Christmas and New Year,  but many of us felt guilty having indulged ourselves too much.  So we pledged to go back to our normal healthy diet and exercise routine immediately.  In spite the resolve and the proper mindset however, the parties, the get-togethers, reunions and family bonding elude us from doing so. 

For what is a get-together without food anyway?  We always concoct the best recipes that are festive, delicious and really too much of guilty-pleasure food.  The result: we overeat, we can't help it! 

But here's a remedy that may help, Jim read that whenever we eat sinful food, we can balance it by eating an equal quantity or more of raw veggies to neutralize it.  Effective? Who knows, but there's no harm in trying. 

The good news is, health and fitness has become a world-wide obsession.  There are endless ways to eat right and stay fit.  Even governments are initiating ways to encourage citizens to embrace proper nutrition.  In the Philippines alone, they recently passed the sugar-sweetened beverage tax (SSB), a way  to discourage everyone from buying them if they cost so much more. 

We are all aiming for a healthy lifestyle, we all have our own kind of healthy juice or smoothie, we eat the best veggie that combats whatever ails us, we bring a healthy lunch to work.  Besides those, we are determined to do the most rigorous exercise that we can master. 

It may  interest you to know that the numbers, meaning vital statistics of weight and waistline is not the only determining factor of good health.  In fact, a medical research found that a good percentage of obese individuals doesn't necessarily  have the health issues like diabetes, hyper tension and other serious illnesses.  

It doesn't mean however that they can be complacent with their eating habits, after all studies show that about 85 percent or so of our health condition is due to our food intake. That is why they say that staying fit and healthy is a lifestyle, not a series of diet and exercise that we ditch after we reach our goal. 

Maintaining good health is a battle against our own selves.  If only to know is as easy as to do.  I say that we do not lack the knowledge to stay heathy.  Our physician and social media bring in almost every info we need.  We can always Google which foods are good or bad for us. 

Staying fit and healthy is the greatest challenge of every generation; it needs a strong will-power and determination, a challenge that we should never ignore.