Spanish-Japanese Inspired Set Lunch at BAM! Restaurant

GastroMonth returns for its 3rd edition in Singapore and from 1 to 30 November selected restaurants recommended in the latest MICHELIN Guide Singapore offers specially-curated menus at value-for-money prices. Participating restaurants include MICHELIN Plate restaurants such as BAM!, Gaig, Dolce Vita, and Akira Back. BAM!’s special 5-course GastroMonth menu showcases innovative Spanish-influenced dishes and is priced at $90 nett. We visited BAM! for lunch and enjoyed an affordable 4 course set for $40++.

BAM! Restaurant is located in 2 shophouses at Tras Street. The shophouses are long and narrow. The entrance of the restaurant opens to a long bar and the open kitchen. The dining area is in the adjacent unit.

BAM! Restaurant at 38 Tras Street Singapore

The restaurant has the elegant industrial decor with bare concrete walls, exposed pipes and the de rigueur Edison bulbs. Large monotone portrait paintings adorned its walls.

BAM! Menu

The website of BAM! described Catalonian Chef Pepe Moncayo as having “cut his teeth at several Michelin-starred restaurants around the world – including a stint at the now-defunct Santi – Chef Pepe now helms the kitchen at BAM! as Executive Chef, where each dish is an exquisite expression of his life’s experiences, elevated by innovative permutations of flavours and textures“. Chef Pepe’s cuisine is hard to pigeonhole and may be best described as dishes with Spanish and Japanese influences.

During lunch time, there is a tapas menu, omakase menu and a set lunch menu. Below are pictures of the menu of BAM! Restaurant.

Set Lunch at BAM!

The $40++ set lunch comprises 2 starters, a main course and dessert. For the main dish, there are three options.

Starters

The first starter was a cold dish of plump cherry tomatoes and fennel jelly sprinkled with Japanese sesame seeds. It was a rather unusual combination. If you don’t the very soft watery texture of the jelly, you would find the dish to be a light and delectable one.

Set Lunch at BAM! Restaurant 38 Tras Street

The next dish was Toretama egg topped with cured salmon roe served with potato puree and crispy chicken cartilage. It was a very good dish and for us easily the best item of BAM! set lunch. The combination of flavours and textures were delightful, especially when the egg yolk burst in the mouth. It was a dish that looked good and tasted even better.

Mains

We selected Beef Short Rib (with a $15 addon) and the Iberico Pork Jowl & Gyoza for our mains. Both the dishes were simply presented and the portion sizes were reasonably substantial.

The beef short ribs had a high content of fats. The meat with red wine sauce was tender and had a nice aroma. It was a simple cozy dish.

The Iberico Pork Jowl & Gyoza dish comprised small pieces of Iberico pork jowl and 3 pieces of gyoza filled with pulled pork. The pork had fatty bits with little strips of lean dispersed throughout the cut. The smoked yoghurt was an interesting sauce to go with the meat. The dish was a satisfying one.

Coffee & Dessert

We asked for a latte ($6) to go with the dessert. The dessert of ice cream, crémeux and chocolate tuile was a nice way to round off the lunch at BAM!.

BAM! Restaurant’s dishes inspired by Spanish and Japanese cuisine were not just unusual but interesting and palatable. It is not an inexpensive place to dine in. The set lunch option makes it a bit more affordable for the ordinary patrons without expense accounts. Nevertheless, the nice atmosphere, friendly service and quality food prepared in interesting ways would draw us back to dine at BAM! again.