Racines Sofitel Singapore - new restaurant in new hotel at Tanjong Pagar

Racines Sofitel Singapore is a new restaurant in a new hotel, Sofitel Singapore City Centre. It is located in the same complex as the Tanjong Pagar Centre. According to the Racines restaurant website, they serve a menu of traditional French classics and timeless Chinese dishes. The restaurant name “Racines” is French for roots. They apparently use herbs grown at the Sofitel hotel’s own herb garden. We were there for lunch.

The fifth floor of the Singapore hotel houses the hotel reception, the lobby bar and the Racines Sofitel restaurant. The restaurant serves buffet breakfast in the mornings and only opens for lunch from 12 noon. In case you are early, having a drink or two at the lovely lobby bar outside is a pleasant place to pass time. You can read about our visit to the 1864 Bar here.

As you can see the restaurant space is bright and contemporary. It was easy to get comfortable in such an attractive restaurant.

Cooking is done at the open cooking stations. The ventilation is very good and there was no smell issue.

Racines Sofitel Singapore Cooking — Racines Sofitel Cooking Stations

The Racines Sofitel menu

The Racines Sofitel menu was presented on one board. It is an interesting menu. Items range from dim sum to lobster bisque and frog legs. We ordered a mixed selection. In the end our Asian roots were revealed when we realised that all but one item we had ordered were Chinese.

The meal starts with an amuse bouche. It was made of pumpkin, carrot bits and other things that I could not remember.

The only French item was the lobster bisque ($28). It contained some small pieces of ravioli that were soon drowned by the soup. Taste-wise it was good but the lobster flavour was not very prominent. We would have preferred a more intense seafood taste.

The scallop siew mai ($12) was served in a container that kept the food warm. The siew mai looks good but the taste was quite average.

Frog legs are offered in three ways on the menu, a French way and two Chinese ways. We settled on stir fried frog legs with ginger, scallions and Chinese wine ($58). The frog legs were huge, as big as chicken drumsticks. With very thin bones, this was a meaty dish. The overall flavour of the dish was very good.

Our final savoury dish was wok-fried egg noodles ($18). It was a good plate of basic fried noodles. But in such an interesting place we were expecting something a bit more creative.

The dessert we had was the mango sticky rice ($14). Served in a glass container, this was a petite but delicious dessert. A sweet end to our lunch at Racines Sofitel Singapore in Tanjong Pagar was made even more pleasant by the wonderful service staff at the restaurant.