Above, left to right Langoustine at French restaurant JAAN; bar with a view – City Space on the 70th floor of Swissotel. Below, left to right: Mikuni Japanese restaurant at Fairmont Hotel; tiger at Singapore Zoo.
sister brands are operated by FRHI Holdings, a hotel company with over 100 hotels worldwide. From my own self-guided tour of these hotels, I can report that the French restaurant, JAAN, on the 70th floor of Swissotel, has the best view of any of the city’s five-star restaurants; and that the world’s most expensive apple can be found at Mikuni, the Japanese restaurant at the Fairmont. This pink-tinged Japanese apple is unlike any you’ve ever had before. The free-flow champagne Sunday brunch at Raffles Bar & Billiard Room, meanwhile, may be tops among all the Sunday brunches that are now a standard feature of top hotels. In fact, I’m sure they must compete for the best brunch. One tip when it comes to food in Singapore: try the food halls usually found on the lower levels at centres like ION, Raffles City and Marina Bay Sands. This is typical hawker food, but served in clean, air-conditioned surroundings and you don’t have to spend a lot of money to eat well. Rooftop bars are more common too now, no doubt because drinks go down well high in the sky in the cool of the night. My research into this phenomenon included a Lychee martini at Fabrika, a terrace bar on the 17th floor of klapsons, a boutique hotel in the Tanjong Pagar district. I can also recommend City Space on the 70th floor of the Swissotel, and KU DE TA, at the top of Marina Bay Sands. I began this Singapore sojourn thinking that a week would
be more than enough time to do what I wanted to do. I thought I knew the city well enough from 20 years ago. But I was wrong. I never got to Sentosa Island, where a Universal Studios theme park has become a popular family attraction. It’s easy enough to catch a taxi to Sentosa, but the more exhilarating scenic route is by cable car from Mt. Faber. It takes you right out over the water, hundreds of metres up and into the heart of Sentosa, where beaches and more theme parks, restaurants and cafés await – all accessible by a free shuttle that makes regular runs from one end of the island to the other. Nor did I manage to re-visit the Night Zoo and Jurong Bird Park, still two of the most popular attractions. And I was a week too early for the event that brings most overseas visitors to the city: the Formula 1 Grand Prix, held annually in September. Someone asked me if I could live in Singapore again. “Maybe,” I said, recalling that the small publishing company started in 1991 was sold 20 years later for a reported $55 million. But for now I’m happy to think of Singapore not as a daily grind but as an all-absorbing holiday destination. After all, I’ll need at least another week to catch up on what I missed this time. Don’t believe me? Check out www.yoursingapore.com. W Thomas Hyde assisted with the research for this article.