In my humble opinion, this was Chef Desmond Shen’s strongest menu thus far. Overall, the meal excelled in concept and execution, while also showcasing two extremely unusual ingredients of cock’s comb and Suppon, a soft-shell turtle popular in Japan. There were more than a few courses that had my friend Zhenia and I falling over ourselves to heap praises on them. Even TH did the unthinkable of immediately posting on Facebook about one that impressed him very much.
Working with only 3 ingredients per dish seemed to be no issue at all for Chef Desmond, in fact I think he thrived at the challenge.
My favourites of the night were the sweet-fleshed Kegani horsehair crab course fluffed up with egg white caviar and seasoned with fermented fat crab sauce, the gorgeous vegetarian creation that had lettuce spread with housemade pea shell miso and crowned in crispy fried curry leaves, the intensely-flavoured Iwashi and cream of mackerel roe toast, and the deeply unctuous chawanmushi that had the loveliness of smoked chestnut purée.
The cheese course, a first at Magic Square, also enraptured me. Interpreted by Chef Desmond as a two-bite wonder of in-house produced Koji cheese, caramelised milk, honey and honeycomb, that explosion of funkiness, sweet, crunch, smooth and more wasn’t so much a party in the mouth but an all-out “Burning Man festival”.