Cover Air Restaurant in Dempsey Hill, which will open on January 31
Air Restaurant in Dempsey Hill, which will open on January 31
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The new restaurant spanning 40,000 square feet in Dempsey Hill opens on January 31, helmed by famed chefs Matthew Orlando and Will Goldfarb
It’s a little hard to find the new Air Restaurant in Dempsey Hill; to get there, I go up the staircase at the car park, past culinary icons like Long Beach Seafood and Samy’s Curry, and down another short flight of steps. It is here that I find myself looking over a massive lawn sloping downwards, my back towards a sleek, white building with floor-to-ceiling windows. Yes, there is the sound of traffic not too far away, but shielded from the lush foliage of the Dempsey enclave, I find myself strangely at ease.
It’s the ideal location for a place like Air, the brainchild of celebrity chefs Matthew Orlando and Will Goldfarb. Air, which stands for awareness, impact, and responsibility, is more than a restaurant—it is also a circular campus and cooking club. What that looks like in practice is an expansive garden supplying fresh herbs for the restaurant’s needs; a dining area spanning over two floors with cooking spaces; and a menu grounded in a nose-to-tail philosophy designed to coax maximum flavour out of common but unexpected ingredients.
“Food is one of the only things in our lives that is necessary for our wellbeing,” Orlando and Goldfarb say. “We wanted to start a conversation around food. How can we make food fun and use it to connect us? Who is producing our food? Where does our food come from?”
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Above Matthew Orlando and Will Goldfarb (left to right) of Air Restaurant
Matthew Orlando and Will Goldfarb (left to right) of Air Restaurant
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But try to slot Air into the label of a “sustainable” restaurant and you’ll be gently corrected by Orlando and Goldfarb. Yes, the head chef of Air may have previously helmed Amass in Copenhagen, which was widely acclaimed for its no-waste gastronomy before it closed down in 2022—or, in fact, held stints as sous chef and chef de cuisine of Noma, which revolutionised foraging and hyperlocal sourceability in fine dining restaurants. Yes, Orlando’s approach to food at Air emphasises sustainable principles by pushing the boundaries of flavour, like lacto-fermenting mango skins and papaya seeds. And yes, only local and regional herbs are planted in its garden, reducing the carbon footprint of importing ingredients.
“Everyone is so quick to use the word ‘sustainability’ to describe this restaurant. But that’s just the byproduct of our pursuit of new flavours,” Orlando says. Sustainability is a conversation that Air engages with, but does not force or “preach” to guests. And as much as Orlando has refined his culinary techniques at Amass, he’s just as excited as a “kid in a candy shop” to apply his skills to Southeast Asian ingredients. Take, for instance, the iconic fermented potato bread that was a favourite at Amass. Orlando is bringing that back, but with a regional twist: cassava, an ingredient he found while touring A Little Wild farm in Johor, Malaysia. The result is an intensely flavourful bread that’s crisp yet fluffy, perfectly good to eat on its own. Eaten with the mushroom XO butter, which is made with mushroom trimmings cooked for 12 hours with ginger, onion and garlic and then blended with butter, it is elevated to another level.
“Awareness [was] at the core of [Amass],” Orlando says of bringing what he learnt from his previous restaurant. “The exciting part is, how do we
make this mindset more accessible and fun for a lot of people? If you are trying to build a community around food and awareness, there is no better way to get people excited about it than injecting a big dose of fun into the conversation.”
Above Fermented cassava bread at Air Restaurant
Fermented cassava bread at Air Restaurant
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Air’s nose-to-tail philosophy, however, is best encompassed by the whole grouper, which genuinely makes use of the entire fish. Fillets, of course, are cured overnight and then cooked to tender perfection in a fragrant beurre blanc sauce. Its fish bones are pressure-cooked, then puréed and mixed with starch to create lavash crackers. It goes with the smoked grouper rillette, made with the flesh taken from the heads and collars of fish and mixed with crème fraîche, aromatics, and a squeeze of lemon.
Dessert is not spared from this treatment either. For the “Reincarnated ‘Chocolate’” dish, Orlando has looked at the three most common byproducts of coffee, chocolate, and coconut production in Malaysia—cascara (coffee cherry skin), cocoa husk, and coconut flesh. Orlando has roasted these byproducts and blended them together to make a “chocolate”, which is shaved over a caramel brownie made of frozen banana skins. The brownies are rich and dense with unexpectedly beautiful aromas, while its accompanying cascara mousse lightens the dish.
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Above Whole grouper at Air Restaurant
Whole grouper at Air Restaurant
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Beyond a restaurant, Air is meant to be a social space of community and learning, especially about the food we eat. Goldfarb takes me on a tour of the garden, run by urban farming social enterprise City Sprouts and teeming with varieties of local and regional herbs. He is in charge of ground support strategy here, a role that he’s perfectly suited to after running Bali’s Room4Dessert for over ten years, where he explored hundreds of herbs and species to create his dessert tasting menus—an effort that garnered him the title of World’s Best Pastry Chef at the World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2021. The garden plays a pivotal role in Air’s culinary ambitions; the white fish ceviche, for instance, is served in a leche de tigre made with a blend of every herb in the garden, served with green mango, cucumber, and slightly bitter emping crisps to cut through the acidity.
Air will make sure to host talks by local farmers and producers. “We are moving further and further from our connection to food. It's not often that people get to meet and hear the story of food from the people that are actually doing it,” the duo explain. “Focusing these conversations
through the lens of deliciousness is essential to getting people excited about being a part of and building this community around food.”
As for the restaurant, it is designed like a clubhouse, with cooking stations on the second floor for cooking classes, which will be taught by famed as-yet-to-be-named chefs in Singapore. Some of its tables have legs made from old soap and oil drums, lamps made of recycled plastic, and the rattan on the wooden chairs is made of styrofoam that had been heated and stretched. But these, again, are the kinds of details that are appreciative of intentional consumption, not shoved in your face in pursuit of sustainability for its own sake.
Above Garden at Air Restaurant
Garden at Air Restaurant
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“We’re always mindful not to be too pedantic. If you come to dine here, it should be fun,” Goldfarb says. And after working in some of the world’s top fine dining restaurants—The Fat Duck, La Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and Per Se for Orlando, and El Bulli, Cibreo and Gerard Mulot for Goldfarb—the duo just want to have some fun. “We really wanted to have a place where we could share things in a really accessible way. Not somewhere that feels too precious and too reserved, but a place where everyone feels welcome,” Goldfarb continues.
Later, as I am leaving, I discover that the front entrance to the restaurant was right smack in the car park all along. I did not have to walk all that way to find its obscure back entrance. But how fitting that the restaurant should be hiding in plain sight all this time—just like how unexpected flavours lie within common ingredients and byproducts, waiting to be coaxed out with the right detail. The result is a novelty to experience.
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Images: Air Restaurant
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About
Ethan is a dining writer with Tatler Singapore. Trained in literary arts and filmmaking, their work has previously been published in Esquire Singapore, Men's Folio, and with the Asian Film Archive and the Singapore International and Film Festival, across a wide range of interests from gastronomy to fashion and arts criticism.
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Ethan writes about exciting news in the F&B industry, specialising in fine dining, exclusive spirits launches, and new restaurants. They are always looking for riveting voices to bring something fresh to an already-dynamic industry.
Follow them on Instagram at @faustiangourmand.
