Pistachio Restaurant - Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Grill at Wheelock Place

Pistachio Restaurant is a Middle Eastern and Mediterranean restaurant on level 2 of Wheelock Place. It is a fairly new restaurant, having opened in July 2019. The layout of the place looked vaguely familiar. I believe this was the space that used to be occupied by Bangkok Jam sometime in the past. We were at the Pistachio Grill for lunch recently.

The Pistachio Restaurant at Wheelock Place is helmed by an Eygptian-born chef. According to the write up on their Facebook page, Chef Khaled Elelimi was formerly with the Shangri-la Hotel Singapore and had cooked for dignitaries and all the Middle Eastern embassies based in Singapore. He also has considerable culinary experience at several Four Seasons properties.

The Pistachio Grill is simply decorated with an eye-catching Egyptian mural on the wall. There are different sections in the restaurant which I think will be useful for those thinking of dining as a group.

Pistachio Restaurant Menu

Here are pictures of some pages from the Pistachio Restaurant Menu. The type of food ranges from the familiar such as pasta and tomahawk steak to less common dishes such as Eygptian Fish Singary and Lahm Bi Ajin.

Pistachio Restaurant - High Tea menu — Pistachio Restaurant High Tea Menu

Our Lunch

Pita Bread

Our lunch started with a pita bread ($5) and two types of dips – hummus ($8) and mohamarra ($12). The pita bread was more than a foot long but very light. It reminded us of a Zeppelin airship. It was served hot and the smell and taste of it were very good. The two dips were just nice to go with the bread. They were different and provided contrast in taste. The hummus (puree of chickpea) had a creamy, nutty taste. The mohamarra had more character. Made with ground walnuts with red pepper it had a mild spicy kick.

Turkish Pide

Our next dish was Turkish Pide ($24) – a traditional Turkish style pizza topped with minced beef, tomato ragout, and Greek Kasseri cheese. If we had a blind tasting we would have thought that it was a thick crust pizza. The topping was quite average – similar to a typical pizza. The warm Turkish bread was once again the stand-out. It had a nice soft yet chewy texture.

Algerian Vegetable Couscous

Our final dish was the Algerian Vegetable Couscous ($32). We had ordered it because we wanted to try something we were not familiar with and because there was a delicious picture of it in the menu. But the “traditional vegetable tagine with North African spices, served with couscous and saffron vegetable bouillon” turned out to be a rather plain dish. The couscous was cooked with some carrots, cauliflower and other vegetables. Some vegetable gravy added some flavour to it.