Food Picks: Mustard Seed 2.0, better food, more seats

SINGAPORE – One of the pleasures of covering the food scene in Singapore is seeing how chefs come into their own.

Chef Gan Ming Kiat, 36, took Mustard Seed from a private-dining business in his parents’ home to an always booked-out restaurant with 13 counter seats and a table for two. People have been known to stalk the reservation site and seats are snapped up in minutes.

For Mustard Seed 2.0, he has done away with the counter and replaced that with tables that seat two, four and six. There are now 22 seats. Potentially, that means more people can get to have a meal there.

With him in the kitchen are chef Wu Shin Yin, 34, chef Gan’s wife, there is chef Desmond Shen, 32, who joined in 2024. Chef Shen’s wife, Ms Yelicia Yeo, 32, runs the front of house.

Together, they have upped the ante – doubling down on punchy South-east Asian flavours, and putting out food that is comforting, familiar and yet sophisticated.

The eight-course tasting menu is priced at $188 a person, and every one of those courses sings. There is the smoked mackerel masak lemak, fragrant with curry and makrut lime leaves, piled on a very light, too-small crumpet with a crisp exterior that yields to pillowy softness.

Pork jowl kerabu is crunchy goodness. The slices of pork get tossed with juicy rose apples, wing beans, puffed cubes of pork lard, laksa leaf pesto and a zingy cincalok dressing. The ingredients and flavours are all familiar, but combined in a new, delicious way.

The restaurant’s dobin mushi, a Japanese dish of soup served in a teapot, has a rather more familiar vibe – a soup your mother might make for dinner. The meat broth is amped up with black garlic, and adding even more earthiness is matsutake mushrooms from Yunnan.

If you have been to Mustard Seed, you will never forget chef Gan’s frog legs, crusted with senbei and curry leaf salt. For the current main course, he uses a thick slice of grouper instead. I’ll say right now that I much prefer the sweeter flavour and the finer texture of the frog legs. So does chef Gan, when I ask. I hope he brings it back.

The grouper, though, is perfectly cooked – the coating light and crisp, and the fish breaks apart cleanly with chopsticks. It is served with koshihikari rice cooked with seafood stock and saffron in a donabe. On top are wok-fried squid, prawns and eggplant. As if that is not enough, the rice is served with a tangy curry, modelled after fish curry in a banana leaf restaurant.

Oh, the flavours as you have spoonfuls of just the rice (umami and wok hei), the rice with curry (a delicious zingy jolt), the grouper on its own (crisp and light and that curry leaf aroma), the grouper with curry (fishhead curry vibes) and then we are all scraping the claypot for escaped grains of rice.

I think that nothing can top this course. And then the meal ends with chef Wu’s Ma Lai Gao, naturally leavened steamed cakes. It is a staple at dim sum restaurants, where they are served in large, blocks. Hers are so very dainty and fluffy.

Immediately, I break mine in half, spread some salted butter on one piece, inhale it while taking in that slightly smoky flavour, and then pour maple syrup over the other half. Then I wish I have another one so I can have both butter and maple syrup on the entire thing.

Next time. Technically, it should be easier to get a table, right?

Where: Mustard Seed, 75 Brighton Crescent
MRT: Serangoon
Open: 6.30 to 10.30pm (Tuesdays to Saturdays), noon to 3pm (Fridays and Saturdays)
Info:

www.mustardseed.sg