Last Updated on September 22, 2024
Pan-Asian Food with a Singaporean Twist in South Kensington.
With plenty of exceptional Chinese restaurants in London, I was excited to try The Bugis Restaurant, a London destination that specialises in Singaporean and Malaysian food – one that might recreate some of those dishes from my childhood and more recent times in Singapore. Street food has a special place in Singaporean cuisine, at one point even with a Michelin-starred hawker stand. Singapore itself is a bustling metropolis with a vast range of dishes influenced by different cultures and cuisines, all of which seem to burst with flavour. Having grown up in Malaysia and travelled there and back via Singapore, for me a visit just a few years ago was enough to evoke a wealth of memories, from the sounds of the markets to the smell of food on charcoal grills, in woks and from fragrant, freshly opened steamers.
Bugis Singapore Restaurant, in the Bailey’s Hotel, is named after a rather infamous part of Singapore, ‘The Bugis’, which was redeveloped in the 1980s into shopping malls and offices. Its London namesake came to fame at the original location round the corner in Harrington Gardens. Now it has moved just down the road, to the Bailey’s Hotel where it reopened in July 2023 with a new chef and a rather luxurious new look and feel.
The dining room of The Bugis, an elegant room with white table linen, comfy chairs and banquettes in dark green cream, chandeliers and large picture windows onto the street is on the ground floor of one side of the hotel, with its own entrance. Staff in white shirts, smart black waistcoats and black trousers, are on hand to bring drinks and take food orders and even early in the evening the restaurant is busy. We sipped on cocktails (a gin and tonic for me and a classic Martini for my companion) while we looked through the menu, taking our waitress’s recommendation to pick the signature dishes, clearly marked on the menu, as the best way to showcase the restaurant.
Unable to pick starters, we opted for a sharing platter which came with crispy fried salt and pepper squid, sesame prawn toast, chicken satay skewers and deep-fried vegetable spring rolls. Two of the four marked as signature dishes this was a good option for the indecisive! The sesame prawn toast with lime coriander dip was outstanding, with a delicious chunky prawn paste filling and a crisp sesame seed shell.
Satay is a dish I ate as a child almost every day in Malaysia. Cooked by the Satay Man who sat cross-legged by the side of the swimming pool, it was made on a small charcoal grill and served on bamboo skewers to ravenous children who had spent the afternoon burning up energy in the water. From memory, the meat was usually mutton, but it’s that charcoal heat on peanut-coated marinated meat that makes for something special. The chicken satay at Bugis was delicious and moist with a definite note of peanut, though a very distant relative of the version I ate as a child.
The deep-fried vegetable spring rolls were crisp-shelled and piping hot, served with a sweet chilli dipping sauce and the crispy fried salt and pepper squid had a delicious spicy coating that we couldn’t quite place.
Our main course of steamed Atlantic seabass is a classic Asian dish that I’ve even tried making myself. We’d hoped that by ordering the ‘whole’ option the dish served would be a fish on the bone to share. However, the menu wording is a little ambiguous and what was served was a large sharing platter of fillets swimming in a light soy dressing, garnished with coriander, a coriander, ginger and garlic paste and crispy shards of deep-fried onion and served with a pretty accompaniment of perfectly cooked steamed baby pak choi and spring onion.
Steamed rice and a colourful and delicious vegetable dish ‘Five Treasure’ with asparagus peppers, celery, mushroom and tofu provided a colourful bowl to complete our table.
We enjoyed a fresh, minerally Albarino with our seafood dishes, a good pairing I’d recommend with any chicken or fish dish.
It was all too easy to be tempted away from the Asian specialities to order a chocolate lava dessert with vanilla ice cream which we shared.
The Bugis Singapore Restaurant
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