What is it like to dine at the new Roia in Singapore’s Botanic Gardens
The chef aims to showcase his mastery of classic French technique, experiment and celebrate locality – both in terms of the Gardens (from which he sources much of his herbs and flowers) and Singaporean food culture.
Roia is helmed by chef Priyam Chatterjee who is trained in classical French cooking. (Photo: Roia)
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Botanic Gardens’ EJH Corner House might be named for an Englishman but its heart has, for a long time, remained firmly French. Over the years, the stately foliage-ensconced, black-and-white building with its glass box upper floor has gone through various incarnations, from Les Amis’ Au Jardin to Corner House, which shuttered in 2023 after a nine-year run. With Roia, it begins its latest chapter under a new name, chef and backer.
THE NEW TEAM
Chef Priyam Chatterjee, 35, is the new face helming the pass at Roia, named for a river which flows from France to Italy. Originally from India, Priyam trained in classical French cooking there and abroad, was part of the opening team for Fauchon in Oman, and led Delhi restaurants Rooh and Qla. He had a brush with Singapore when he was a semi-finalist in San Pellegrino Young Chef 2018, and is the proud recipient of France’s Chevalier de l’Ordre du Merite Agricole (Order of Agricultural Merit), which recognises individuals who have made a significant contribution to gastronomy, agricultural-related activities and art.
Championing Priyam is Kishin RK, the founder and chief executive of RB Capital Group, the real estate acquisition and development company behind projects such as lifestyle precinct Quayside in Robertson Quay.
“We met and I knew we wanted to work with Priyam,” he said. “Once I saw this space with its beautiful scenery, I knew it was the perfect place for him,” added Kishin, who was closely involved in the look of the new restaurant. Accessed via a short stroll from the Nassim Gate Visitor Centre, Roia comprises a gilded, smoky-mirrored private dining salon on the ground floor and an airy, elegantly muted dining area upstairs. Here, cream-toned carpets and seating, buff marble tables and dark-wood floors contrast lightly with rattan accents, gold-brushed lighting and pristine white Moriyama tableware, all the better to let Roia’s lush surroundings of tropical palms and heritage trees shine.
So lovely are the gardens that every chef who’s ever worked here has, in one way or another, incorporated botanical elements into his food. Apart from this clue, however, I’d no idea what to expect. Because Kishin used words like “crazy” and “out there” to describe Priyam’s culinary approach, I half-wondered if I’d meet “Gaggan 2.0”, thinking of the rambunctious, swear-happy Indian chef who infamously had fine-diners eating off their middle fingers and memorably, insisted on showing off his tube socks emblazoned with swear words when we last met.
AN INVITATION TO PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD
Pierced septum and colourful sneakers aside, Priyam (who cites Massimo Bottura and Anne-Sophie Pic as his food heroes), is decidedly more restrained, albeit with a strong playful streak. At Roia, he aims to showcase his mastery of classic French technique, experiment and celebrate locality – both in terms of the Gardens (from which he sources much of his herbs and flowers) and Singaporean food culture.
On that day, I tried the six-course menu (S$188++ per person). There is also an eight-course (S$288++ per person).
We began with an amuse bouche trio. Two of them – a hamachi, yuzu and ikura tart, and a corn and sea grape snack inspired by local kueh pie tee – are tasty in their own right. But the one everyone will remember is the Roia Toast, a hollow, lego-sized crystal brick topped with tiny chips of pata negra and an emulsion of vadouvan, a French curry spice-blend. Inspired by local curry puffs, the snack is created using a blend of potato and kudzu flour and requires two hours of oven time and a stint in a dehydrator to maintain its airy crunch. It’s admittedly very different from its inspiration or even its first iteration, a tube with piped filling.
“We are working in a contemporary genre,” said Priyam. “We are allowed to bend.”
And bend he has. Check out Snowfall in Singapore, in which granules of frozen yoghurt are showered, snowstorm-style, onto an awaiting dish of chopped Hokkaido scallop, daikon radish and nashi pear, topped with petite dollops of lemon curd and yellow and deep-purple flowers and leaves.
There is also Corners Flowers, a dish that displays Priyam’s passions outside of cooking. “I see myself as an artist who uses food as his medium,” said the chef, citing creative disruptors like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jackson Pollock and Damien Hirst as his inspirations. The latter two in particular informed his fish dish, a wedge of Japanese ginpo placed atop violently-painted slashes of three sauces – yuzu-calamansi, beetroot and smoked almond – that hint at Priyam’s early years working as a saucier. The tumult of white, maroon and near-black streaks are also meant to evoke the orchids beloved by professor Edred John Henry Corner, EJH Corner House’s former resident and the Botanic Gardens’ former assistant director. Artistic treatment aside, potentially divisive is the fish, a member of the cod family that Priyam decided on after shortlisting eight other varieties. Cooked on a pan to the lightest char, its flesh has a soft, unctuous translucency that may appeal to some and appear undercooked to others.
More straightforward is the Fungi & Corner dish, an ode to Professor Corner’s tenure as a noted mycologist. A disc of potato rosti is topped with confit egg yolk, assorted seasonal mushrooms and a quenelle of N25 caviar before a moat of warm mushroom veloute is poured around it at the table. It’s a rich, earthy and satisfying medley of comfort food elements, designed to make you sit back and sigh with contentment.Priyam is keen to forge connections with his new home (“I want to have a relationship with Singapore”) and has been busy experimenting with local ingredients like pandan, ginger (“the variety here is just mental,” he enthused) and calamansi, which so impressed him that it already appears in a few dishes.
His menu also plays with temperatures, with a lovely home-made brioche and smoked Belgian Plaquette butter splitting the cold and warm courses. What’s For Breakfast, a dish resembling a raw egg yolk formed from mango and egg-white made from coconut water topped with meringue shards, is a bit of an outlier, being neither hot nor cold. I think I’d have preferred the latter. Sucre, a sweet and tangy combination of French Charentais melon compressed in vanilla oil and topped with melon sorbet and almond tuile, ends the meal.
Those with dairy allergies will feel especially welcome at Roia. There is little to no milk-based cream used here, which is unusual for a French restaurant. Instead, Priyam uses almond cream, the discovery of which he said was a “eureka moment” for him. “Even though my portions are quite generous, afterwards you’ll feel quite light, rather than feeling you can barely walk,” he quipped.
LOOKING AHEAD
Post-meal, Priyam spoke of wanting to do more and push the creative envelope further, if given the opportunity.
“I’m new and I have to accept and embrace that,” he said. “I have to allow diners to give me a chance to express myself. I can’t do that with my debut menu because I will scare people off.”
Beyond food, Priyam wants to offer diners wonder.
“I want diners to become children again, to experience things they have missed. Snowfall in Singapore is my invitation to people to put away their phones and imagine that it can really snow in Singapore – how cool would that be, right?” he asked.
“I want everyone who comes to Roia to be a part of Wonderland.”
