H O S T E D
The new leads of Open Farm Community’s culinary team are Head Chef Oliver Truesdale-Jutras and Sous Chef Phoebe Oviedo, and this couple are truly passionate about “locavore”, a term to describe “a movement of people who prefer to eat foods which are grown or farmed relatively close to the places of sale and preparation” (thanks google!). Therefore, you can expect their contemporary casual style of cooking to feature mostly locally-sourced produce as well as vegetables and herbs grown right in the grounds at Open Farm Community (OFC).
There were two such dishes from last Thursday’s dinner that left a strong impression on me. One of them was this Barramundi which tasted exceptionally fresh. I learned the reason for this is because the fish they use takes less than 6 hours to travel from the source to the restaurant. Supplied by Tiberias, a marine farm just off Pulau Ubin, the barramundi was steamed with dashi butter and topped with housemade furikake using local seaweed and pulut hitam. The sweetness of the sautéed snow peas and baby pea shoots also had me smittened. How lovely to know that the latter as well as the blue pea flowers crowning the dish, were both harvested from OFC’s own garden.
Such effort from the chefs to stay true to their beliefs and to champion the brand’s direction is admirable, and inspires even greater appreciation from me for the dish.