Food Review: Casa Restaurant By Remy Lefebvre At Chijmes | Woodfire Gastronomic Restaurant With Homely Vibes [Closed]]

Posted on August 30, 2021 by theRantingPanda in Food

The Place Located at Chijmes, Casa Restaurant by Remy Lefebvre is a contemporary woodfire gastronomic restaurant. Casa means home in Spanish, though this is not a Spanish restaurant per se. The restaurant is split into the main dining hall which seats 35 and a living room area which is conducive for pre-dinner drinks or a casual chill-out session.

I like the soothing palette of the dining hall, a combination of blue, wood and neutral tones which makes the ambience cosy. You can’t miss the open kitchen as well, where you can catch chef Remy and his team at work. Chef Remy was previously the chef de cuisine at Butcher’s Block in Raffles Singapore.

The Food Seafood and vegetables are the highlights for chef Remy, though there is also options for meats with a meat served daily on the bone. For the meats, chef Remy ages fish and dry-ages beef to intensify the flavours and for better textures.

For lunch and dinner, Casa offers the 4-course Discovery menu for S$118; the 6-course Experience menu for S$198; the Carte Blanche with 8-courses for S$258; and an Omakase menu for S$348. For lunch time only, the restaurant offers an executive menu, called ‘Trust Me’ – a 3-course at S$88. All the above menus are presented with snacks and petit fours.

I had the 6-course Experience menu, starting with some snacks. The Smoked Petuna Trout & Roe Tartlette is a beautiful start with aged Tasmanian Petunia trout, sprinkled with dried black kampot pepper from Cambodia.

The second snack deserves to be a side dish on its own. Lard Sandwich with Mouhamarra, where thinly sliced lardo from the Basque Country is sandwiched between the toasted rye bread. There is a tinge of spiciness from the Muhamara Sauce, a classic Armenian condiment. This sounds like the perfect weekend breakfast with coffee.

The first course proper is the Gambas, which has a myriad of flavours. You get Gambero rosso red prawns, Bafun uni and phisalis served with gambas head oil, yuzu and wasabi kosho, pine nut milk and verbena oil and chickpea tuile. Loads of Japanese influences here, where the flavours of the gambero rosso red prawns from the Mediterranean coast is elevated with a tinge of spiciness from the wasabi towards the end.

The second course is the Ratatouille, with champagne escabeche, coastal herbs and plankton oil. Organic French cherry tomatoes are used here, while the French zucchini and Italian eggplant are roasted. The delicious champagne escabeche sauce is a mix of white wine and champagne vinegar, which also goes well with the complimentary bread served.

The toasted Sourdough from Starter Lab is served with avocado butter, and do dip the bread into the champagne escabeche sauce too!

The third course is the Oyster No. 0, where the plump Irish oysters is cooked in their own shell over embers, seasoned with Nasturtium oil and fish garum and topped with an oyster leaf.

The next course is one of my favourites, Marron Lobster with coconut and saffron, served with Koji rice. Lovely and fresh lobster where it is brushed with coffee oil, then grilled. Special mention goes to the delicious Koji rice, which has a risotto-ish texture, full of umami and do have the lobster meat with the rice together.

For mains, I chose the Wagyu Grass-Fed Dry-Aged 40D served with savora mustard and potato foil. The beef is aged for 40 days before being grilled, and the restaurant believes in souring their beef from farmers who use traditional farming methods where cattle are raised in open lands and grass-fed. You get a flavourful Tasmanian beef flavour here, just seasoned with salt and pepper. The organic baby potatoes are easy to pop and has a nice crisp to it.

The last dessert course is something light and refreshing, Summer Berries. It is a healthier dessert for sure, where you get mochi with crème fraiche and berry jam filling, served with sauteed organic seasonal berries.

And last but not least, Petit Fours to conclude the meal.

Rants Nothing specific in particular, which is not a bad thing. Perhaps one to note is that the menu is pretty much seafood and vegetable focused, though you still get your choice of meats for the mains. If you aren’t a seafood or greens person, it might not be ideal for you.

Will I Return Again? There is no specific cuisine which dominates the menu at Casa, and it is definitely more of a global cuisine in terms of the ingredients used and style of preparation for the dishes. The menu evolves based on seasonality as well, so you can expect different dishes along the way. This restaurant is ideal for date nights, celebratory occasions or simply an intimate catch up with friends at the living room.

This was an invited tasting, though all opinions expressed are our own.

Make your reservation instantly at Casa Restaurant by Remy Lefebvre here.

TheRantingPanda says:
Taste bud: 4/5
Hole in the pocket: 4.5/5
Ambience: 4/5
Overall Experience: 4/5