Taste the best of spring with these 5 fine dining menus

by Rachel Genevieve Chia

Fresh greens are on show from April to June. Photo: Raffles Hotel Singapore

The freshness of spring gets a final hurrah this month before menus transition to summer. With beautifully ripe produce, these fine dining spots – from Italian to Chinese – celebrate the best, and last, of the green season.

藝 yì by Jereme Leung

The seasonal items here will change your mind about produce from China. For one, the mugwort glutinous dumplings are an outstanding dim sum pick – sticky, crunchy, and savoury from a water chestnut and mushroom filling – and tantalisingly dependent on the mugwort supply.

People visit for the goose palm (with abalone, noodles and mullet roe), but don’t overlook the beancurd skin roll stuffed with tuna, tofu and spring onions, which is marvellously crisp and clean-tasting.

Restaurant JAG

JAG’s signature vegetable-centric menu highlights the changing flavours of French-imported harvest, and is paired with wild herbs from the Savoy Alps.

Here, the proteins match the greens, not the other way round: think artichoke with lamb, celtuce with barnacle, green pea with scallop (a classic), and Swiss chard with sea bass. Especially clever are the appetisers and canapes – ranging from green apple elixir to fava beans with garlic veloute and lobster.

The pre-dessert course is disarmingly pretty: a mossy, smoky, floral tableau in which nestles a cassis-infused blackcurrant sorbet, inspired by chef Jeremy Gilllon’s childhood woodland foraging trips.

Impressively, the dishes at this one-star establishment can be tweaked to exclude any ingredient you don’t fancy, whether it’s soybeans, lamb tongue, or frog.

Restaurant Gaig

Hearty Catalan cuisine is on full display in the spring/summer menu at this international outpost of one-Michelin-star Gaig from Barcelona.

Among the treats: a sorbet of salmorejo (chilled tomato soup) between two slices of tomato water meringue; edible flowers atop a sheet of silken cuttlefish and squid ink rice; and of course, Gaig’s cannelloni with roast meat filling and truffle cream sauce, a signature since 1869.

For the main: suckling pig – all of it – loin, tail, brains, fat, trotters, even the head, all prepared different ways. At dessert, a guava glaze and drops of guava puree lighten a goat’s milk mousse, topped with a whimsical cloud of cotton candy.

Cure

One-star Cure is one of the few places in Asia offering fine dining from the Emerald Isle. Chef Andrew Walsh’s Nua (or “new”) Irish spring menu features such delights as Irish blue mussels with barbecued spring peas, whiskey-glazed smoked salmon with horseradish and marigold petals, and the dreamily-named “apple from the orchard”: a velvet cloud of yoghurt espuma, oats, and hazelnut crumbling with green apple sorbet and nasturtium.

Duck fans can enjoy the Silver Hill variety, served in a salad of spring cabbage with egg mayo and crackling, and as part of the main course, seared on binchotan and paired with endives, rhubarb, cauliflower puree and berry vinegar aged in-house 14 days.

(Read more: Forget wine, tea pairings are the latest trend in fine dining)

This story first published in The Peak Magazine.