A NATION in degustation

Inner Sydney degustation-only restaurant Nel has Singapore in its sights with an ambitious project to put an entire culture's food on your plate, writes Steve Madgwick.

- Steve Madgwick

The actual weight of 11 meticulously considered dishes is trivial compared with the weight of expectation resting on a chef attempting to encapsulate a nation’s cuisine into a single degustation.

Nelly Robinson faces this ‘Merlion’ of a challenge as he conceives a ‘Singapore reimagined’ tasting menu for his eponymous restaurant, Nel, in Sydney’s Surry Hills.

How does an English-born, Australian-based fine-dining chef capture the complex, culturally diverse and fiery cuisines of this geographically bantam-sized geopolitical giant of a country on 11 plates?

A little black book heaving with local culinary contacts and a bespoke week-long gastronomic tour of Singapore is how.

“Singapore has some of the world’s best street food, middle-ground restaurants and top Michelin-starred restaurants,” says Robinson, who began his epicurean career at Michelin-starred Northcote, in Lancashire, aged 15. “I want to reach out and go beyond; bring in Little India, Singapore’s British colonial heritage, the Chinese influence, the classics. There are lots of English chefs here [in Singapore] and my local connection is strong. It’s very special to sit down to high tea at grand places like Atlas Bar.”

Any chef worth their salt knows that Singaporean cuisine has its genesis in the country’s hawker centres and plastic-chaired institutions like Keng Eng Kee Seafood (KEK), a communal-dining ‘zi char’ restaurant (‘cook and fry’ in Hokkien) secreted away in Alexandra Village, a light-industrial neighbourhood in central-west Singapore.