This thread is about a restaurant that you and I will no longer be able to dine at.
Magic Square, a pop-up located in an old single storey building at Portsdown Road, closed earlier this month, May 2019, at the end of a year-long project, and with it, an exciting chapter of Singapore's evolving culinary narrative has ended.
Magic Square must have been one of the most exciting things to happen in the Singapore dining scene in recent years: an incubator for young, promising chefs, offering fine, creative cuisine, for a very reasonable price, in a great setting and with a unique dining format. How fine? I would say that purely in terms of the quality of the individual dishes served, there were dishes we sampled at Magic Square which would not have been out of place in a one-star Michelin joint (Not that stars matter all that much...).
This was only ever meant to be a one year project (With the limited lease of the venue being one factor), the brainchild of Tan Ken Loon, whose other restaurants, such as the Naked Finn, have already made waves in the local dining scene.
The objective of Magic Square was to give 3 promising young chefs an opportunity to develop and showcase their talent. From Day One, the focus was on the cuisine with all other unessential elements stripped out: there was minimal advertising and marketing, furniture was from Ikea, kitchen equipment was sponsored by Miele. There wasn't event a proper sign on at the entrance: this hand-scribbled sheet of paper on the door was it!
But what Magic Square provided was amazing cuisine, and a refreshingly interactive (and delicious) end-to-end dining experience that made loyal fans out of many who dined there (Myself and Mrs yflyer included).
This was a fixed set / degustation dinner menu, 9 courses for S$78++, offered in two seatings at fixed timings: 6pm-8pm and 8.15pm-10.15pm.
You dined at a communal table in a large dining hall in Portsdown Road...
...with the chefs introducing each dish to the table as it was served...
The kitchen was an open kitchen right next to the dining hall where you could see the chefs at work prepping the ingredients, plating the courses.
No bar or wines by the glass, but a couple of wine fridges with a selection of red and white wines available for purchase by the bottle.
The 3 chefs, Abel Su, Desmond Shen and Marcus Leow rotated each month, as head chef and creator of the menus, with the other 2 assisting when it was not their turn. Mid way through the project Marcus left the project for health reasons, and on came Sook Yi who joined the project as the new 3rd chef.
Mrs yflyer and I became aware of Magic Square through a mutual friend, fairly late in their 12 month journey, but once we began dining there, it became a regular monthly dinner.
The menu changed every month: so each time we dined there we made a reservation for next month, and evidently so did many others. Almost every dinner we had there was a full house.
What we also found remarkable about our dinners there was the fact that, as we were all dining at a communal table, there was often conversation with the diners seated near you, even if they were total strangers. And every single time we dined there, we had absolutely interesting, and occasionally, quite notable, seatmates dining with us -- the conversations we had at the table were invariably interesting, and that aspect of dinners at Magic Square -- that spontaneous interaction, also became part of the experience for us.
Mrs yflyer and I dined on the last official night of the one year project, on 30 April this year. Ours was the 6pm seating...I suspect the very last dinner seating at 8.15pm was an even more lively affair. I say last "official" evening because a short extension of the lease saw a few additional dinners hosted in May before doors finally closed earlier this month.
But as I said at the start, this was the end of one chapter: Magic Square v1. I believe Ken Loon and his team are already looking at plans for Magic Square v2, and if that happens, you can be sure that Mrs yflyer and I will be among the first in line to revisit the Magic Square experience!
Magic Square, a pop-up located in an old single storey building at Portsdown Road, closed earlier this month, May 2019, at the end of a year-long project, and with it, an exciting chapter of Singapore's evolving culinary narrative has ended.
Magic Square must have been one of the most exciting things to happen in the Singapore dining scene in recent years: an incubator for young, promising chefs, offering fine, creative cuisine, for a very reasonable price, in a great setting and with a unique dining format. How fine? I would say that purely in terms of the quality of the individual dishes served, there were dishes we sampled at Magic Square which would not have been out of place in a one-star Michelin joint (Not that stars matter all that much...).
This was only ever meant to be a one year project (With the limited lease of the venue being one factor), the brainchild of Tan Ken Loon, whose other restaurants, such as the Naked Finn, have already made waves in the local dining scene.
The objective of Magic Square was to give 3 promising young chefs an opportunity to develop and showcase their talent. From Day One, the focus was on the cuisine with all other unessential elements stripped out: there was minimal advertising and marketing, furniture was from Ikea, kitchen equipment was sponsored by Miele. There wasn't event a proper sign on at the entrance: this hand-scribbled sheet of paper on the door was it!
But what Magic Square provided was amazing cuisine, and a refreshingly interactive (and delicious) end-to-end dining experience that made loyal fans out of many who dined there (Myself and Mrs yflyer included).
This was a fixed set / degustation dinner menu, 9 courses for S$78++, offered in two seatings at fixed timings: 6pm-8pm and 8.15pm-10.15pm.
You dined at a communal table in a large dining hall in Portsdown Road...
...with the chefs introducing each dish to the table as it was served...
The kitchen was an open kitchen right next to the dining hall where you could see the chefs at work prepping the ingredients, plating the courses.
No bar or wines by the glass, but a couple of wine fridges with a selection of red and white wines available for purchase by the bottle.
The 3 chefs, Abel Su, Desmond Shen and Marcus Leow rotated each month, as head chef and creator of the menus, with the other 2 assisting when it was not their turn. Mid way through the project Marcus left the project for health reasons, and on came Sook Yi who joined the project as the new 3rd chef.
Mrs yflyer and I became aware of Magic Square through a mutual friend, fairly late in their 12 month journey, but once we began dining there, it became a regular monthly dinner.
The menu changed every month: so each time we dined there we made a reservation for next month, and evidently so did many others. Almost every dinner we had there was a full house.
What we also found remarkable about our dinners there was the fact that, as we were all dining at a communal table, there was often conversation with the diners seated near you, even if they were total strangers. And every single time we dined there, we had absolutely interesting, and occasionally, quite notable, seatmates dining with us -- the conversations we had at the table were invariably interesting, and that aspect of dinners at Magic Square -- that spontaneous interaction, also became part of the experience for us.
Mrs yflyer and I dined on the last official night of the one year project, on 30 April this year. Ours was the 6pm seating...I suspect the very last dinner seating at 8.15pm was an even more lively affair. I say last "official" evening because a short extension of the lease saw a few additional dinners hosted in May before doors finally closed earlier this month.
But as I said at the start, this was the end of one chapter: Magic Square v1. I believe Ken Loon and his team are already looking at plans for Magic Square v2, and if that happens, you can be sure that Mrs yflyer and I will be among the first in line to revisit the Magic Square experience!
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