These days Duxton Hill is increasingly becoming a hip place to be for many foreigners as evidenced by the various types of cuisines: Russian restaurant, Irish pub, French restaurant, British gastrobar, Japanese pastries…and the demographics of the crowd…
Today we went to try out a Spanish Tapas place – Sabio Tapas Bar & Restaurant. The last time I had spanish food was at a restaurant near Clarke Quay – Tapas Tree (I think) and the most prominent spanish food I know is Seafood Paella.
The place is rather packed for a weekday night! There’s limited sit down tables at the shophouse, but more of bar counter seats & low tables around. We end up sitting along the bar top right next to their famous Jamon Iberico (I’ll come to that later) and the draft beer counter~ Almost made me feel as if I’m part of the crew behind the bar counter. =)
The first thing that caught my attention was their coasters. The cork side of the coaster was printed “Stolen from Sabio”. Out of curiousity, we asked if they are meant to be momentos for guests to bring home & they said “YES”. WOW… its gd quality coasters…not those printed paper ones which turns soggy & easily destroyed by my itchy hands after 1 use…
For draft beers they have: San Miguel, Hoegaarden, Leffe Blonde. They also have a white & red house wine list and other bottled wines. Other than my usual beer, we also tried their red Sangria – a wine punch. They also provide marinated green olives as appetizer.
Now for the food, at Sabio they serve a variety of Cold Tapas, Hot Tapas & Jamon (Spanish Ham). Being seafood lovers, we naturally chose: Viciras en salsa de cava (Sea scallops with sparkling white wine sauce), Gambas al pil pil (Sizzling prawns in virgin olive oil and garlic) and Mejillones ole’ triana (Mussels in tomato sauce).
I like the huge, fresh & succulent scallops and the white wine sauce. The prawns were a little too small, I would prefer a little bigger sized ones. Same for the mussels. The prawn flavouring was slightly too bland for me, the tomato sauce for the mussels were good but the mussels weren’t savoury enough. But overall the dishes are still pretty nice. Perhaps we are too used to the local Singapore food that are oily, flavoursome and strong in use of spices.
Ok now, let me get back to the prized Jamon Iberico ham, which cost $20 for 50 grams. Its the one which I manage to take a photo of in the first photo collage of this post. I quickly took out my handy camera to snap a pix while they were slicing it up and carefully weighing it (which explains why the pix was blurred…). The amount of ham on the plate on the weighing scale was close to 80 grams.
I was told that Jamon Iberico is the best ham in the world and its cured for 36 months before its ready to be consumed. Out of curiousity, I asked about its texture, how it taste etc…until I was offered a slice of it~ I’m so honoured… It was soft yet chewy – extraodinary taste…I would have ordered a plate if not for me having finished a heavy meal already. Will try it next time I visit Sabio. =)
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