Stellar@1-Altitude: 6-Course Elements Menu Highlighting Choice Ingredients From Land & Sea At Raffles Place

Now that the peak of the festive season has come and gone, it’s time for us to get back to our regular programming and treat ourselves to some award-winning, progressive Australian fare at Stellar@1-Altitude.

The view from Stellar, is, in short, pretty stellar. It’s an unrestricted view of Marina Bay, and at night, the buildings twinkle and shine unabashedly.

They have just launched their Elements Menu, a collaborative product of Chef Chris Millar’s and Chef Isaac Henry’s efforts. This collaboration saw them working directly with some of the world’s best farmers and producers to create highly-curated signature six-course and nine-course menus.

I had the privilege of tucking into the 6-Course Menu (S$168++), with the option of adding a wine pairing element to your experience for only S$88++.

The Forest In The Ocean is a juxtaposing title for a dish, which succinctly describes the source of the ingredients—namely, morel mushrooms, abalone, foie gras, and forest berries.

The tartness lent a slight kick to the creamy and earthy foie gras. The abalone did the trick by adding a hint of brininess which made this mono-bite dish a wholesome mouthful, with all the right flavour profiles.

A rhyming name is always catchy, and Sea & Tea was a dish that certainly caught my attention. I always love an octopus dish, and I silently challenged it to impress me, even before my first bite. The iteration here uses Fremantle octopus, with Japanese flying squid, seasoned with fennel, paprika, and chamomile (now you can understand where the ‘tea’ part comes in).

The chamomile was used more like an aromatic than to add flavour, but it did so brilliantly, elevating the bouncy octopus. The fennel added a subtle bitterness that proved to balance the dish, and without much effort, the plate was clean.

Don’t be fooled by its name—A Floating Daisy—because it doesn’t literally mean you’ll be served a dainty floating daisy. Pardon the poor pictorial representation of the dish, but trust that it tasted much better than how it’s presented visually here.

Made from artichoke, hazelnuts, and saltbush, this soup was thick, creamy, yet light on the palate. For those unfamiliar with saltbush, it’s a member of a global family of plants which are commonly found in deserts and salty environments. It didn’t have a distinct taste, but it sure was nutty, slightly coarse, and surprisingly filling (given its modest portion).

This fragile piece of Japanese butterfish was an excellent choice of fish for Textural Me Dai. The addition of tobiko, rainbow chard, and finger lime was an amalgamation of sour and natural sea sweetness, and made even more delicate by the flakiness of the fish.

Was it as textural as its name suggests? The popping crunch of the tobiko together with the silkiness of butterfish, and finally the soft chewiness of the rainbow chard definitely made it so.

For the menu’s fifth course, you can choose between A Saucy Pig or A Cow In The Garden (top-up S$20). The former features 5J pork pluma, while the latter serves a Mayura full blood wagyu oyster blade MBS 9+. I went with the latter because wagyu is simply too difficult to turn down for this meat lover.

The uncommon cut is served with bone marrow Naruto sweet potato, legumes, and truffles. It’s weird, because the plate was coloured to look like a bright green garden, with an appropriate smattering of brown, while the pièce de résistance sat idly in the centre—much like a cow in a garden.

It certainly tasted just as beautiful as it was presented, with the marbling of the wagyu providing just the right amount of resistance and chew, before surrendering to the supple tenderness of high-grade beef. The accompanying greens—not to mention, the ostentatious truffle—created an ideal balance, so as not to allow the wagyu to be the only feature of the dish.

Dessert can come in the form of either Mons Cheese Selection or Dessert Art. I highly recommend the Dessert Art, as it’s a spectacle, unlike any other tableside service I’ve witnessed. The pastry chefs will paint, splash, scatter and assemble the dessert right at diners’ tables, and it’s almost too pretty to eat.

What stood out for me was the varying use of chocolate across all the desserts displayed. I understand some may find chocolate to be quite a pedestrian element when it comes to dessert, but be ready to be impressed by the way that this simple ingredient is transformed into a complex recipe.

There were fruits, tea flavour profiles, flowers, crumbles, and everything else in between splayed out for diners to eat and relish.

A meal at Stellar is always an unforgettable one. And that doesn’t simply come from the remarkable view, and polished dining room draped in meticulously ironed table cloths. It’s from the honest food that’s served by the culinary team, and the mindfulness behind procuring each and every ingredient.

If you wish to book a fine-dining restaurant that’s more than just its looks and stunning views, Stellar@1-Altitude is the place to head to.

Expected Damage: S$100 – S$300 per pax