Singapore - Kilo

2nd floor in an old, non-descript industrial building in the middle of nowhere.  No air-conditioning in humid Singapore.  Spartan decor with touches of quirkiness, cutesy-ness, almost cosy.  A little off-beat vibe, and a mixed bag of customers.  Casual, with a supposed edge.  It is supposed to be Japanese/Italian comfort food.  My jury is still trying to figure that one out though.

Sparkling Sake

Sweet - check.  Refreshing - check.  Carbon dioxide - check.  It's not serious stuff but it was good enough to get us started.  Admittedly a little bit more of a ladies' drink - like a Sprite with alcohol.  Pleasant enough.  The drinks menu is a little quirky so this was identified as Pink, rather than sparking sake.  You therefore have to ask since the other Sake colors were green, brown and black.  We didn't really get a good explanation for the whys behind, so it was totally lost on us.

Brown

As an example, this was the "Brown" we ordered.

The menu was promising and many things sounded like things we would like so we picked fairly randomly.  The waiter did warn us that the kitchen had some issues and perhaps the regular chef was not in attendance, but beyond that, and having arrived for dinner, I'm not sure if that was meant to be a salvage attempt.

To be fair, the food wasn't bad.  It was just a little overdone.  Not overcooked, but overdone.  Too much sauce, too much salt.  If you're there to drink, you won't have a problem since you would need to drink.  Other than that little glitch, the ideas behind the food were well thought out.

Beef tartare and fries

A tad too much gherkin and sauce but otherwise a good start.  Fries a tad dry though - powdery insides rather than creamy.

12-hour pork with crackling and purple mash

By far, my favorite of the evening.  Pork was tender but not mushy, crackling providing a nice contrast in textures.  The purple mash provided nice color but nothing else.  Given the low lighting in the place, it might as well had been regular mash.

Seafood Ceviche

The ceviche was really just a salad of chunky seafood and vegetables.  With the exception of the octopus which was as chewy as a tire, and the salt factor a tad high, there wasn't much to complain about this.  Perhaps one thing was that it arrived much later than the other 2 dishes.  A little odd since this was meant to be an appetizer.  No?

Lava cake

Dessert choices were limited so we settled for the molten chocolate cake.  I think they forgot to insert the lava before baking so nothing oozed...  oh well, the cake was well just a cake.  Could give it a miss.

Overall, the place wasn't too impressive in execution.  A real shame since the menu looked exciting.  Hopefully, they work out the kinks, although they've been opened a while already.  Also, Kilo has irregular opening hours and is currently only doing dinner.  But since you need reservations anyhow, you'll always call before popping by.  I learnt that the first time the hard way.  Good thing Loysel's Toy was downstairs and a decent coffee was available to make up for the detour.

66 Kampong Bugis
#02-01
Singapore 338987
Tel: +65-64673987