How do the signature dishes of these two dining concepts under 1-Atico fare when they're delivered to your home?
The food and beverage industry has had a torrid time of late. Lockdowns, restrictions and social distancing have imperilled many an outlet, and led to the imperative of adaptation—quite a bit like human evolution. The strong and the fit have survived—homo erectus, if you like—while the weak and frail have been picked off like a bunch of lethargic homos habilis taking the hindmost positions in a group trek across a savannah.
Restaurants able to bridge the periods in which dine-in has been prohibited upon pain of deportation (or worse) have tried to pivot towards takeaway and delivery, with varying degrees of success. Let’s be honest here; some food simply doesn’t travel well—think pastas and souffles—while others seem to be born to the task (think Indian cuisine and maybe even pizzas). Personally, I have spared many a thought for fine dining outlets in Singapore over the last several months that, having honed their recipes and presentations, have been forced into putting stuff in boxes preparatory to stuffing them in plastic (never single use, please) bags.
Related: 5 New Restaurants in Singapore Offering Delivery and Takeaway Menus
One such is Flnt and Fire at 1-Atico, two very good restaurants on the 55th and 56th floors at Ion Orchard. FLNT espouses all the virtues of Nikkei cuisine—diasporic Japanese Peruvian, to contextualise—and boasts a menu that your taste buds will relish, while Fire jogs south-east to Argentina, and gets serious about cooking proteins in wood-fired hearth grills. The results are invariably delicious because you get the sense that each dish comes out straight from the ‘oven’ and is on your table within seconds. You can taste the smoke, embers and different types of wood that infuse the meat, fish, or crustacean, and it’s a delightful experience.
How then, does Flnt/Fire expect to do a delivery service feast at which you could very well be looking at 30 minutes or more between the end of the cooking process and plating up at someone’s home?
The answer is: with a great deal of imagination and more than a nod to the expedient of compromise. The food is never going to taste the same as it does in either of the restaurants, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be good. As a now only part-time chef, I would take a cleaver to the throat of a dining guest who allowed one of my dishes to sit on his or her plate and lose its perfect temperature. I don’t spend hours slaving away in the kitchen cauldron to let food get cold, and I would imagine that the chefs at Flnt and Fire (especially the latter) feel much the same way. Their acquiescence, therefore, in allowing their superbly curated and much experimented on cuisine to descend 56 floors and then get sent heaven knows where, must be sobering and more than a little bit frustrating.
Related: Peruvian Chef Virgilio Martinez to Open New Fine Dining Restaurant Maz in Tokyo
