Exploring Sun with Moon's seasonal Japanese selection, Expat Choice reporter Joanne Flinn settles into the flavors and beauty of friendship, food and the surroundings.
There's a moment, just as you round the corner at Wheelock Place and approach Sun with Moon, where the ordinary corridor falls away. The wooden draping, the old-style Japanese sign, and then as you step in, on the right is a counter lined with deep turquoise-teal tiles and a huge golden orb, sun and moon as one. Just beautiful. And every time I've been here over the years, a humongous bouquet of orchids stands at the entrance. If I said it had a hundred strands, I'd probably be underselling it. These days, of course, it shares its space with the offerings to the delivery gods. But inside, the room opens into a gentle curved amphitheatre overlooking trees and greenery, with light that makes you forget there's a major road crossing below.
My girlfriend and I settled into the lower section near the windows. It's the kind of spot where you can sit, chat, turn and look out, and let the conversation wander where it needs to go.
Sun with Moon's seasonal menus are one of the reasons I keep coming back. For anyone who's travelled around Japan, this is the restaurant where you get to do the circuit while staying in Singapore. The current seasonal focus is Kyushu, with twenty new dishes drawn from seven prefectures. We ordered enthusiastically.
We began with a sudachi honey emo mochi, fresh off the grill. I'll admit I was slightly concerned about burning my tongue. It was decadent and beautiful, flat, with that soft mochi chewiness, a white cheese melting inside, honey layered through, and then we squeezed calamansi over the top. Tart, sweet, rich and chewy, glorious at very first bite.
Then a mature Japanese yellowtail at its full buttery stage, very lightly teppanyaki grilled with yuzu kosho. The kind of fish that barely needs anything done to it, and Sun with Moon's kitchen knows exactly how little to do. A Kagoshima buri and salmon nabe were our matching soup. Though the word soup does not do justice to it. Comforting it was.
The Kyushu grand bento tasting arrived as a two-part affair. Trying to describe a bento with this many pieces is a happy challenge. Beautifully fresh sashimi with salmon, tuna and tai,a white fish. Prawn tempura in sushi form. Roast pork with that perfectly half-cooked egg only the Japanese seem to master, where the white is set and the yolk runs golden. Spring rolls. And a chawanmushi, that silky steamed egg custard with a rich stock layer on top, sitting beneath what looked like a wrapped ball of pepper, which when broken into revealed tiny tobiko that burst with salt against the creaminess beneath. One of those mouthfuls that comes and gets you.
Along with this was a snow crab tamago don. The pink of the snow crab, the white of the flesh, bright green peas scattered across the top, and around the edges the richness of golden egg yolk folding through. Beneath it all, enoki mushrooms, those impossibly thin strands, adding a gentle texture to every mouthful.
All of this was accompanied by genmaicha, served in a dark stone earthenware pot with tiny tea thimbles that we kept refilling. It was the perfect pairing, a soft fragrance that cleansed the palate without adding flavour or tone into the next bite. Very, very good.
Dessert was simply ichigo ice cream. Anyone who's eaten fresh ichigo strawberries knows what that means strawberry and cream, rich and lovely, the right finish to a beautifully balanced meal.
As human beings who've lived in Singapore a long time, we did what old friends do, caught up on life. It turns out we're both mid-move. She's in a serviced apartment while her flat is renovated, complete with the inevitable discovery that throws plans and budget sideways. May there not be another. We go way back through different parts of our corporate lives, and when the conversation turned to what I'm working on professionally, her CFO brain clocked in immediately, getting the logic and the value proposition directly. Always good when the money brain sees the logic of a business question.
As we left, the maître d' was kind enough to take a photograph of the two of us. A lovely afternoon, well fed and well talked.
