Clos Pasoh Review - Set Lunch Menu $42-49++

Clos Pasoh is described as a “… French brasserie for today’s urbane food and wine lover“. It is located on the second floor of this small building in the Keong Saik dining area of Singapore. We were there recently to try their lunch menu.

Finding Clos Pasoh

It was not easy to locate the Clos Pasoh restaurant as its signboard is so inconspicuous. Which is a contrast to its downstairs neighbour, Spanish restaurant Barcelona, which has its name plastered so prominently on the building. Entrance to Clos is via a dark staircase near the Dorsett Hotel.

The Restaurant Interior

Plants are used with great effect in the Clos Pasoh restaurant interior, both in terms of decoration and as privacy screens. The smallness of the restaurant and the lush foliage create a positive and welcoming first impression.

The wine cellar at Clos Pasoh looks inviting.

Clos Pasoh Wine List, BYO and Corkage

We enquired about the corkage fee at Clos Pasoh. It seems that the only option to bring your own wine is by using their 1+1 policy, i.e buy one bottle from the restaurant and you can bring one from home. The Clos Pasoh wine list is quite substantial, with French wines (understandably) being the main event. Here are pictures of some sample pages from the list. Bottles start from around $100.

We selected a bottle of 2019 Dampt Freres Chablis Vieilles Vignes ($115). Chablis tend to be reliable bets at restaurants. They are usually at a lower price range and very compatible with a variety of food.

The bottle we brought from home was a 2011 La Conseillante, a dark fruity Bordeaux that provided contrast with the Chablis.

Clos Pasoh Set Lunch Menu

Here is a picture of the set lunch menu that was offered at our lunch. Two or three course lunch at $42 and $49 respectively. Some items attract the payment of more money.

The Starters

We thought that the starters were the most interesting part of the menu. We tried all three starters available for lunch at Clos Pasoh. The most luxurious one was the coconut & lobster bisque, steamed lobster dumpling which required a $10 extra which we felt was a worthy update. Both the bisque and lobster dumplings were delicious. Fortunately the coconut presence was very mild and did not detract from the seafood taste.

The crispy onion dumplings, onion consommé, Cantal cheese was also an enjoyable dumpling starter. The humble onion was used expertly to flavour this dish but without any of the sharp or pungent notes that we sometimes associate with this bulb.

White wine marinated mackerel tart, basil & mustard sauce was the third starter. This had a different character from the dumpling starters. The strips of marinated mackerel had a prominent fish taste, but this is expected of mackerel. Together with the sauce and garnishing, it was a light and tasty starter.

Main Courses

With only three types of main courses available, we were able to try all three of them. The breaded chicken cutlet looked the most boring. It looked and tasted like thin slices of veal schnitzel. Fortunately the eggplant topping and sauce provided some highlights to the flavours and made it less boring.

Skate wings was the next main course at our Clos Pasoh lunch. This is a picture of two portions of the skate which were presented to the table at the same time. They were the fin parts of the skate fish. They have the taste and texture of sting ray. The cartilaginous parts of the fin were embedded but were easy to detect and separate. Overall it was good and the portion was larger than predicted.

Our final main course of charcoal grilled beef tenderloin required a $15 surcharge. It arrived in two sections – the meat portion (picture above) which was quite small and the French traditional gratinated smash potatoes (picture below) that was large and very good. We are not sure we would order this again. The skate wings seem like a better choice.

Cheese and Dessert

We only tried one of the desserts available – the chocolate mousse with Guanaja dark chocolate. It was a nice jar of chocolate mousse but not very memorable.

The cheese platter required an extra payment of $15. Given that the three course lunch costs $9 more than the two course, we think the two course combination with the cheese seemed like a better choice.