Atout Restaurant a new French restaurant at Dempsey that takes over from Au Petit Salut

The new Atout Restaurant has taken over from Au Petit Salut at Dempsey Hill, Singapore. The place looks roughly the same as what we remember APS to be. According to the statement on Au Petit Salut’s website announcing its closure after operating for two decades, the “… owner, Alice Low-Ang has decided to retire and will take a passive role partnering the iconic chef, Patrick Heuberger in a new restaurant, ATOUT (pronounced as Ah-Too).” It felt more casual, we missed the nice thick tablecloths when we were last at APS.

One new feature at Atout Restaurant is a retail counter where items like cheeses, charcuterie, breads and cakes are available for sale.

Atout Restaurant Menu

Here are pictures of the Atout set lunch menu, a la carte menu and a sample page from the wine list.

The bread served at Atout Restaurant was good. It was only at the end of the meal when we realised that these were separately charged at $3 for the bread and $0.50 for the butter. We have encountered places where they charge for bread, but this was the first time we have encountered an add-on charge for butter.

Anyway, let’s not dwell on the 50 cent charge but turn our attention to the food instead. The lobster bisque ($14) was very good. Thick and creamy with a balanced seafood taste.

The deep-fried frog legs ($10 for a pair) were the largest frog legs we have ever seen. They were the size of a regular chicken drumstick. The meat was dry and the taste was rather plain.

We ordered the 40 garlic chicken ($36). This was a huge portion of chicken served in a claypot. I reckon there was probably half a chicken in there. We did not count the garlic cloves in the pot but there were certainly a lot, together with lots of onion, butter and other condiments. The overall result was a wonderful tasting pot of chicken. The cloves of garlic were all well softened. They had lost their strong taste and could each be eaten on its own and better still with pieces of chicken.