Food Picks: Iru Den highlights Taiwanese ingredients with flair

Iru Den

Diners who have not been to Iru Den recently will notice a marked change on the menu. The ciabatta is served with butter mixed with aged caipu or preserved radish. The fish and many ingredients are from Taiwan.

This is a shift in direction for chef Javier Low, 32, who previously used Japanese ingredients cooked with Japanese and European techniques.

His April 2024 marriage to Ms Emily Chen, 31, the restaurant’s Taiwanese sommelier, and their trips to Taiwan opened his eyes to the quality and variety of ingredients there.

He says ingredient price increases following the oil price hikes from the Russia-Ukraine war and wariness about Japanese seafood following the release of treated nuclear waste water from the Fukushima disaster also made the switch easy.

Tasting menus at the 21-seat restaurant are priced at $128, $188 and $258, and all of these feature the Taiwanese ingredients. There is the prized and mellow caipu his mother-in-law aged in salt for more than 10 years in butter and a warming cup of old hen broth, so comforting on that grey day I had it.

Kanpachi, sourced from Penghu, is aged and then lightly charred on charcoal, and served with marinated Taiwanese plums, dill and verjus for an appetiser that perks the appetite up immediately.

Carabineros from Yilan are brushed with an XO sauce made with Taiwanese flying fish innards and very lightly cooked and served with a prawn stock and herb butter sauce, and for textural contrast, a deep-fried prawn head.

Amadai has become a cliche on restaurant menus. At Iru Den, the tilefish is from the South China Sea near Kaohsiung, and gets the crispy scale treatment. But it is served suan cai yu style, in a fish bone and butter sauce with a too-small scoop of pickled Taiwanese chillies served alongside.

There is something familiar, but also different about this course, which is one of the highlights for me.

The best part of the meal, however, is the Sanma Donabe or claypot rice, which is part of the $188 and $258 menus.

Pacific saury from the waters off Kaohsiung are dry-aged, filleted, salt-cured and grilled over charcoal. They finish cooking with the Sunshine rice from Taiwan in the claypot and are served with kale, pencil mushrooms and chrysanthemum petals. Crisp cubes of pork lard are spooned over my bowl of rice. It is rich but not overly so, and the autumn vibes are strong.

I have no problem eating Japanese seafood. But in a city where lemming mentality runs hot, I am glad that one chef is looking elsewhere for ingredients and inspiration. The food at Iru Den is not Japanese, not French, not even totally Taiwanese. But it is delicious and, for diners looking for something new, different.

Where: 27 Scotts Road
MRT: Newton
Open: 6 to 11pm (Mondays to Saturdays), closed on Sundays
Info: WhatsApp 8923-1127 or go to

www.iruden.sg