Keong Saik Road, near Chinatown, has no shortage of superb eateries, whether zi char or Michelin-starred dining...
The Guild, a newly opened gastropub, is one of the latest entrants to the scene there, offering a wide range of craft beers, cocktails and other beverages along with a very refreshing and inspired take on gastropub cuisine.
The Guild is a collaboration between Young Master Breweries in Hong Kong and Italian American chef Vinnie Lauria. I've been a fan of Young Master Breweries for a long time. The brewery founder is a personal friend, and Mrs yflyer and I and sampled their wonderful craft beer at Stone Nullah Tavern in Hong Kong when we were last there.
What exactly is a gastropub? While I've been fortunate enough to dine at some very fine restaurants, I'm a relative newbie to the bar/pub scene, so I had to Google the definition...from what I gather it's still a pub/bar/restaurant, but one which serves high-end or upscale beer and cuisine.
Not all gastropubs are created equal, and there might have been more misses than hits here, at least in the Singapore context, since the concept of a Gastropub hasn't really been on the collective food radar of Singapore foodies (That's my impression anyway -- happy to be corrected!).
But with The Guild, I think we have a gastropub that I find really groundbreaking, both in concept and execution: The ambience wonderful, the drink list remarkably creative and eclectic...and the cuisine is, to me, approaching genius, where chef Vinnie Lauria has managed to offer a menu which is a daring and mischievous blend of the familiar and the unexpected.
Here is a chef who has mastered the tastes and techniques of western cuisine, yet has somehow managed to distill key elements of Asian/Singaporean cuisine and ingredients into his recipes, working with local producers to create dishes with his own spin/riff on local specialities in ways that brought smiles to our faces. And speaking of smiles, the menu here is almost a magic show where nothing was what it seemed..."marrow" bruschetta? That may look like marrow, but it most certainly was not! And on Vinnie's menu, the American-Chinese dish General Tso's Chicken has been subverted (In a good way..) into something that just might tempt the diner to taste local frogs legs from Jurong Frog Farm.
The Guild, a newly opened gastropub, is one of the latest entrants to the scene there, offering a wide range of craft beers, cocktails and other beverages along with a very refreshing and inspired take on gastropub cuisine.
The Guild is a collaboration between Young Master Breweries in Hong Kong and Italian American chef Vinnie Lauria. I've been a fan of Young Master Breweries for a long time. The brewery founder is a personal friend, and Mrs yflyer and I and sampled their wonderful craft beer at Stone Nullah Tavern in Hong Kong when we were last there.
What exactly is a gastropub? While I've been fortunate enough to dine at some very fine restaurants, I'm a relative newbie to the bar/pub scene, so I had to Google the definition...from what I gather it's still a pub/bar/restaurant, but one which serves high-end or upscale beer and cuisine.
Not all gastropubs are created equal, and there might have been more misses than hits here, at least in the Singapore context, since the concept of a Gastropub hasn't really been on the collective food radar of Singapore foodies (That's my impression anyway -- happy to be corrected!).
But with The Guild, I think we have a gastropub that I find really groundbreaking, both in concept and execution: The ambience wonderful, the drink list remarkably creative and eclectic...and the cuisine is, to me, approaching genius, where chef Vinnie Lauria has managed to offer a menu which is a daring and mischievous blend of the familiar and the unexpected.
Here is a chef who has mastered the tastes and techniques of western cuisine, yet has somehow managed to distill key elements of Asian/Singaporean cuisine and ingredients into his recipes, working with local producers to create dishes with his own spin/riff on local specialities in ways that brought smiles to our faces. And speaking of smiles, the menu here is almost a magic show where nothing was what it seemed..."marrow" bruschetta? That may look like marrow, but it most certainly was not! And on Vinnie's menu, the American-Chinese dish General Tso's Chicken has been subverted (In a good way..) into something that just might tempt the diner to taste local frogs legs from Jurong Frog Farm.
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