SINGAPORE - (THE BUSINESS TIMES) By local F&B standards, Restaurant Ember is practically a grandaddy at the ripe old age of 14. In dog years, that's 98. Old enough to be allowed to lounge on the sofa and snap at whoever it wants to, or pee where you would rather it didn't.

As a restaurant, it should be entrenched as a stalwart in our dining scene with the right to say, "you should be happy to eat what I've been cooking all these years; at my age I shouldn't be trying to keep up with your ever-changing whims and fancies."

But that's not always the case in a Singapore where people prefer puppies and cool food. Or do we? Since original chef Sebastian Ng called it quits in 2014, his successor Sufian Zain seemed to be at a Hamlet-like crossroads of his own - clutching a plate of the sakura ebi pasta going, "to keep, or not to keep?"

After almost two years of juggling the hearty, gutsy cooking that Ember was known for with his own measured style, chef Sufian has now passed the baton into the hands of newly-installed chef Alex Phan, whose last gig was at the short-lived progressive-minded restaurant, Sorrel.

Soft-spoken and genial in manner, chef Phan is an able hand with a big task at hand - to keep old customers while drawing in new ones. It's easier to make an impression in a new restaurant - nobody knows what to expect and takes what you cook at face value.

At Ember, you never know if someone's going to quibble if you do away with any of the old classics, or grumble that you can't do anything else.

So what chef Phan has done is keep a few dishes from the old menu while ramping it up with some of his own local-infused creations that he parks under the umbrella label of "market-to-table" cuisine.

The classics turn out to be the more grounded dishes, while the new ones are interesting ideas which are a little shaky in execution. The signature sakura ebi pasta (S$32) is still the familiar angel hair pasta streaked with briny shellfish oil and the umami of minced shio kombu, but frying the tiny shrimp in a crispy tempura batter elevates it to a more enjoyable level.

Local duck leg (S$36) is turned into a reasonably meaty and tender confit with a crisp skin and placed on top of braised mushrooms and lentils.

On the other hand, the pumpkin soup from the S$38 set lunch menu has a distracting bitter edge from the addition of galangal, which interferes with the natural sweetness of the vegetable.

The soup itself is perfectly adequate on its own, but the galangal has the effect of someone tapping you on the shoulder while you're trying to listen to your favourite song.

We pick the seabass for the garlic broth and meesua the menu says it comes with. Or rather, you say "broth" but I say "gravy" and even then, not a lot of it.

A very nicely fried piece of locally farmed seabass - meaty with crisp skin - is flanked by a few sticks of deep fried crispy noodles and sits on a smidgen of thick white sauce that is a pale re-enactment of Chinese restaurant style crispy seafood noodles with gravy. We can imagine a better reaction if the gravy had been replaced by piping hot stock poured over the fish at the table.

A composition of carrots (S$14) is the most original and successful dish we try - warm, skinny and tender heirloom baby carrots tossed in a caramelly carrot sauce and candied peanuts. If there are any links at all to rojak, we ignore them and simply enjoy this ode to unpretentiousness.