AIR at Dempsey Hill

We didn't bother to mull over the menu and opted for the Chef's Choice set at the brand new AIR. The menu infuses Southeast Asian dishes with European flavors. It's communal dining for us, so there were three starters, two mains with a side of 'heirloom' rice, and a dessert.

The multi-hyphenate AIR is a venue that's home to a restaurant/cooking school/farm/research lab. It's a great concept by chefs Matthew Orlando and Will Goldfarb, and Indonesian entrepreneur Ronald Akili. I hope it can survive the cutthroat industry and our fickle dining scene. Its service and logistics in managing a full-house at dinner are still a bit patchy, and our diners aren't as forgiving or leisurely as those chilling out in restaurants in Bali.  

We started with an excellent blob of fermented cassava bread with whipped mushroom XO butter, crispy oyster mushrooms with Sarawak black pepper emulsion, Air kimchi and garden herb spices, and grilled tiger prawns with pickled shallot butter, daikon, garden herbs and puffed rice. 

The server had suggested that to add on a $25 supplement to change the second fish to a grouper instead of having both fillets of seabass. So we did. They were done in different styles. The wild-caught sea bass was grilled and came with a side of marinated radish of green mango and burnt coconut. The grouper tonight was the better fish in this style. The grouper sat in a gravy of coconut, and came with crisps that were apparently fried from fish bones!  

The heirloom rice was delicious. We were really stuffed and couldn't finish the glazed whole kampong chicken with snake beans, lemongrass, and chunky herb chimichurri. Took the leftovers in to-go box. The cocktails for now, are a miss. They're not quite up to par yet. Skip those and stick to wines or a regular gin and tonic. 

The dessert is a bowl of 'chocolate' mousse of sorts, but without cocoa beans — they named it Re-Incarnated 'Chocolate' sorbet with burnt Sichuan pepper meringue and caramelized coconut. It's done with roasted cocoa husks, cascara and coconut flesh with cocoa butter and sugar. I admit, I tasted a lot more sugar than chocolate. It was too sweet for me and my tastebuds really didn't like the mesh of flavors, so I left it after three spoonfuls. It was a good 'incarnation', but I can taste the no-cocoa bits. Anyway, considering that most dark chocolates contain harmful heavy metals, then I suppose that by removing the cocoa beans, this dessert are less contaminated with lead and cadmium.