Food Picks: Japanese-Sichuan restaurant Shisen Hanten gets glossy makeover

SINGAPORE – After a five-month break, one-Michelin-starred restaurant Shisen Hanten is revved up and ready to go again.

In December, it reopened its doors to reveal an artful new interior – translucent pebble-like forms now “float” down from the ceiling, like petals suspended on a breeze – and a refreshed menu with yet more Japanese-inflected Sichuan dishes. 

Tokyo-born chef Chen Kentaro is following in very illustrious footsteps. He is the third-generation owner of Shisen Hanten, inheriting a 66-year legacy built by his late father Chen Kenichi, Japan’s longest-serving Iron Chef, and grandfather Chen Kenmin, who pioneered Chuka Szechuan Ryori – the distinctive style of cooking his family’s brand is famous for. 

The fusion of flavours is most pronounced in the steamed kinmedai with hot and sour sauce ($64+). This premium fish, rarely used in Chinese cuisine, is marinated in a brine of Japanese sake, hua diao wine, wine lees, fermented Japanese mochi rice, facing heaven pepper, Thai fish sauce and various salts.

It is then bathed in a subtly sour, gently prickling sauce made from fried fish bones and flavoured with a cross-cultural confluence of spices. Blanched Japanese spinach, silky sheets of yuba and julienned leeks complete the dish, which has a balanced, fragrant taste. 

While the fish impresses with the delicate finery and clean cooking that characterise Japanese cuisine, other dishes, like the stir-fried Hokkaido Mangalica pork ($78+) and the restaurant’s signature mapo tofu (from $30+), pack the kind of punch one typically expects from Sichuan food. 

The pork, in particular, is diabolically delicious. Thinly sliced, audaciously fatty slivers of pork belly are stir-fried with vegetables and seasoned in an assortment of fermented bean sauces. It is hearty, salty, oily, spicy – in short, everything satisfying about a big ol’ bowl of mala xiang guo, just far more refined.

Away from the prying eyes of other diners is a new, more exclusive experience called The Chef’s Table (minimum spending of $288++ a person). Set in a private room that seats eight, it offers guests a chance to interact directly with the chefs and watch them at work. 

Special creations like monkfish liver xiao long bao grace this season’s menu. Standard a la carte fare is also sprinkled with an added dash of opulence: The already luxurious foie gras chawanmushi with crab roe soup, for instance, is served here with Alaskan king crab. 

The restaurant also has four other private rooms, each elegantly outfitted and named after a city in Sichuan. There is an additional semi-private section, adjacent to the main dining hall and panelled with glass, so diners can feel like they are part of the action without having to share the space. 

Where: Level 35 Hilton Singapore Orchard, 333 Orchard Road
MRT: Somerset 
Open: Noon to 3pm, 6 to 10pm daily 
Info:

shisenhanten.com.sg