Luke’s Oyster Bar and Chophouse

The amazing shellfish plateau

Nestled in Gemmil Lane, Luke’s Oyster Bar and Chophouse welcomes you in with its clean lines of decor, high ceilings, and flooded with natural light.

The menu is clean and simple, and sticks to it’s “chop house” roots. We decided to go with the two specialties of the house, starting with the seafood platter, and then Luke’s bone-in tenderloin au poivre.

The shellfish plateau is one of the best we have ever had. And we’ve had our fair share of seafood platters in Sydney, which has access to the most amazingly fresh and delicious seafood.

Chilled whole lobster, giant shrimp, two varieties of oysters, tuna tartare and fresh crab salad. There were dipping sauces for the the lobster, shrimp and oysters but honestly all they needed was a good squeeze of lemon to appreciate the delicate sweetness of each. Absolutely divine.

Luke’s bone-in tenderloin with a peppercorn crust and mustard cognac jus 

We ended up sharing the tenderloin for our main, cooked on the bone for added flavour. Unfortunately I didn’t read that it came with a peppercorn crust & mustard cognac jus. It’s not at all that it tasted bad, but both seemed to challenge the bold flavour of the tenderloin. But kudos to the selection of meat. Tender and absolutely delicious.

I’d like to try other the other items they had on their menu but to be honest, I’d find it hard to go past that shellfish plateau again. And again. And again 🙂

Luke’s Oyster Bar and Chophouse
20 Gemmill Lane, Singapore
Tel: 6221 4468

 Open: Mon-Sat 12.00 – 24.00 (closed Sundays)

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Bistecca Tuscan Steakhouse

Open just three months, Bistecca Tuscan Steakhouse on Mohamed Sultan Road specialises in authentic Tuscan cuisine, including bistecca fiorentina – charcoal-grilled T-Bone steak that weighs in at more than 1kg.

The deliciously tender fillet steak

I’d like to go with a huge group of people, just so that we could order everything on the menu. There are plenty of options for non-steak-lovers, but both of us were in a beefy mood, so we decided on the fillet steak instead of the bistecca. We could then order our steaks as we preferred (mine was medium rare, D medium). The beef is organic, dry-aged Australian Wagyu-Holstein. Highly marbled, the thick fillet steak came out perfectly cooked, and so tender you could have used a butter knife to cut through it. And it tasted so good that you didn’t either of the two condiments that each steak comes with. The steaks don’t come with anything – we were recommended the mashed potatoes but decided on char-grilled asparagus with lemon oil which came out as five thick spears, perfectly cooked so that they still had some crunch to them.

Char-grilled asparagus with lemon oil

We shared a starter of heirloom tomatoes, rocket, burrata and parma ham. I think tomatoes are one of the basics that any good restaurant should have access to, and the heirloom tomatoes in our starter tasted like they had just been plucked off a vine basking in the Southern Italian sun. The acidity and sweetness from the tomatoes was perfectly balanced with the creaminess of the burrata, the pepperiness of the rocket and the saltiness of the parma ham.

Chocolate lava cake with candied orange peel

We wisely shared the first course, because we then had space for dessert. I had the chocolate lava cake with candied orange peel and D had the chocolate mousse tart with salty caramel. A small and beautifully sweet way to end a splendid meal.

Chocolate mousse tart with salted caramel

A true taste of Italy that took us back to our recent trip to Florence, this is definitely a place we’ve earmarked to go back to for more.

Bistecca Tuscan Steakhouse
25 Mohamed Sultan Road
Tel: +65 6735 6739

Brilliant bedrock

If you want a really really great steak in Singapore and can’t get to Mortons, go to Bedrock. Tucked away in a quiet enclave behind 313 Somerset, this gem of a restaurant has it all. Delicious, tender, perfectly done steaks (where you can order roasted marrow or pan-roasted foie gras on top), iberico ham, well mixed cocktails and discrete but attentive staff who seem to understand, well, service.

Unlike Prime Society, it has a solid understanding of ambiance, and manages to create a cosy, warm ambiance that makes you, well, want to be there. And their truffle mash, which has a heavenly aroma of truffles, has a perfect consistency, unlike the glue-type consistency of the one at Prime Society.

I couldn’t find two more different restaurants and I’m very very very glad that we found Bedrock. Hurrah !

Bedrock Bar & Grill
96 Somerset Road
#01-05 Pan Pacific Service Suites
6238 0054

Prime Society does a damn fine steak…sadly not much else.

It’s been ages since I’ve really craved a steak.  Never been a huge steak fan, but when we were back in Sydney we used to do steak and mash every Monday and since arriving in Singapore my palette seems to have changed.  Given it’s been so long, we thought we’d not push our luck and try somewhere we haven’t been so tried to book a table at Mortons but were told that the earliest reservation they had was at 9.30.  I would have eaten my own arm by then so we decided to give Prime Society a go – D has been wanting to go there for a while now.

Their site is so overly fancy that trying to find the menu and a contact number was difficult to find and for someone like me who has very little patience to start with, they almost lost me there.  But I persevered and ended up speaking to someone who just should not be answering phones for service establishments – she couldn’t get my name right even as I was spelling it and was not rude, just came across as really incompetent but I got my 8pm reservation, so I was happy.

We arrive at the restaurant, which takes up a large corner lot at Dempsey Hill and I am surprised that it is so empty on a Saturday night.  Fair enough, it IS a large restaurant, made to feel even bigger by the very very high ceilings, but that just made it look, well, empty.  And that is never something good for restaurants.

Luckily, things turned around at that point.  The service staff were knowledgeable and attentive while managing to stay discrete and allow D and I to mull over the menu and wine list.  They do suggest wines with each steak, but sadly the amarone they suggested with the T-Bone was not even on the wine list, although a Valpolicella Ripassa was, which sufficed for the evening.

We started with the carnivore plate entree – made for sharing, a combination of cured meats, sausage and sliced steak, served with hommous, olives and sundried tomatoes.  The salami was delicious – all the flavour with not too much salt, but the rest of it was pretty blah.

However, the special T-Bone steak, at a whopping 600g was absolutely superb, and after all, that’s what we came for.  D and I decided to share it and boy were we glad we did – it was huge – even with the bone.  The meat though, was perfect for the two of us – D likes his steak medium, me, medium-rare and the meat got rarer as we got closer to the bone.  The steak itself was melt-in-the-mouth delicious and required none of the red wine jus that we ordered with it.  Sides of garlic potato puree was left pretty much untouched by D and I – he didn’t like the garlic and I thought the consistency reminded me of glue.  The rosemary potatoes were unremarkable and the truffle cauliflower cheese was lovely, but as we make it ourselves at home with lashings of truffle oil, we are a tad spoiled and missed the truffly goodness in tonight’s.

Dessert was the only other winner – Frangelico affogato for me, Amaretto affogato for D served with a shot of delicious espresso and sticky, chewy really good vanilla ice-cream.

They really do need to do something about the ambiance though – the decor is confused – think they are trying to be too-cool-for-school, piping chillout tunes but the high ceilings and lack of soft furnishing just make it lose all its appeal.

All in all, if you really fancy a good steak, go to Prime Society – just don’t expect too much else from the rest of the meal.

Location: Blk 10 #01-20
Dempsey Road
Tel: (65) 6474-7427