First Class Cuisine: Affordable private room dining with fully customisable Chinese omakase for businessmen & celebs
Modern dining experiences should convey a story and provide a memorable experience for their customers. While Singapore has many casual dining alternatives at hawker centres and some fine dining establishments, there is a conspicuous lack of regal, bespoke dining experiences that cater to individual interests and aesthetics.
On top of that, most restaurants do not cater for private individuals who wish to discuss business or shun away from the public eye.
To close this gap, First Class Cuisine stands out as a hallmark of culinary excellence in Singapore. This restaurant is quietly located in River Valley and offers only private dining rooms ideal for personal gatherings, business meetings, and celebrations, with every aspect meticulously crafted to give a sense of grandeur and exclusivity.
What I tried at First Class Cuisine
First Class Cuisine offers bespoke dishes that combine the richness of Cantonese culinary traditions with current Western influences. While their lunch set menu starts from S$48, we went for the mid-tier, starting at S$68 per person for its Lunch Set.
This lunch set was a 6-course menu including dessert which was why I found it to be quite affordable fair for its price. This also takes into account the private room dining which has no minimum spend.
The first course was a Duo Homemade Dim Sum Delight while there was nothing too special I felt that they might have gone slightly overboard with the fusion – the siew mai lacked lustre despite the abalone on top.
Next was the Double Boiled Beauty Healthy Soup which was a pork ribs soup and I had to say it warms the soul on a rainy day. This definitely helped to compensate for the dim sum that was a little lacking.
The third and fourth courses were protein dishes. Namely, Crispy Sea Bass Fillet with Homemade Garlic Bean Sauce and Pan-seared Australian Scallop with
Scramble Egg White & Roe.
This was where the magic started to happen. Crispy golden brown fish with a flaky centre in a bed of garlic bean sauce which had a balanced sweet and earthy flavour. The scallops, on the other hand, drowned in a decadent scrambled egg white slurry enhancing the mouth feel.
To end the savouries, the starch was Grilled Pork Ribs with Handmade Noodles in Chef Recipe Sauce. While it does not sound like anything much, these pork ribs were deboned and steeped in a sweet glaze, making you want to go back for more of these juicy slabs! The noodles were the other star of the show, they were cooked al dente, coated in a mushroom sauce that gave it the earthy umami kick.
Besides the Lunch Set menu, we also tried one of their Customised Menu (S$208) where some of the heavy hitters were the plump and juicy Cod Fish as well as the A5 Wagyu Beef. Not a second more in the heat because these were cooked to perfection with the right balance of flavours.
However, with a S$208 bespoke menu, I did not expect any dishes to disappoint. The Baked Australian Scallop Spaghetti with White Sauce & Cheese Served in Fresh Coconut unfortunately did.
While I applaud them for their innovation and creativity in serving spaghetti in a coconut, it just did not make sense taste-wise. Sweet, nutty and even earthy notes engulfing the spaghetti just did not taste good. You can imagine the flavours of this similar to how you would dip cheesy pasta in thick coconut cream – not pleasant.
There were dishes we also felt could be improved like the Pan-seared Superior Shark‘s Fin with Premium Organic Pumpkin Broth with its generous portions of shark’s fin soaked in pumpkin broth together with beansprout for the crunch. We felt that the soup could be a lot thicker than how it was to give it that richer and more velvety mouth feel.
Final Thoughts
All in all, I feel that some dishes were a hit and some were a miss at First Class Cuisine. The good part about this is that the menus are fully customisable so you can take what you think is nice and craft out a menu that you would like.
On top of that, I can also imagine why businessmen and women like this private style of dining as it provides an exclusive area to have business meetings and events.
Expected damage: S$65 – S$100 per pax
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