29-05-2025
Food Picks: A celebration of spring and summer produce in Italian restaurant Somma's new menu
Italian restaurant Somma looks to keep the momentum with its first menu change for what it calls its Solterra season. PHOTO: SOMMA
Food Picks: A celebration of spring and summer produce in Italian restaurant Somma's new menu
SINGAPORE – After opening to much fanfare in September 2024 at lifestyle cluster New Bahru, Italian restaurant Somma looks to keep the momentum with its first menu change for what it calls its Solterra season. Sol refers to the sun, while terra means earth.
The intricate dishes celebrate spring and summer produce, and I find myself enjoying severa l vegetable elements across the menu ($268++ for six courses). There is a four-course Saturday lunch at $168++ too.
As always, the meal starts with a couple of welcome snacks – this time presenting the artichoke in two ways.
First, it is served as a warm broth from a 'flask' made of artichoke, followed by farinata (chickpea pancake) topped with crisp mammole artichoke and house-aged perch lardo spiced with fennel and black cardamom.
The first course showcases grilled fava beans studded with pickled pine nuts and drizzled with burnt lemon thyme-infused tomato water, and a delicate elderflower dressing.
Served with this is an 'asparago zebrato', named so for the striped glaze on the white asparagus. The glaze is made with soya beans, oolong tea and asparagus water, while the stripes are made of black shallots infused with lapsang souchong tea.
Highlighting the sea is a plump mussel and grilled razor clams dish, followed by the return of my favourite carrot spaghettone with sea snails and a rich mantis shrimp bisque.
Somma's mussels and grilled razor clams dish.
PHOTO: SOMMA
But while the meat main of grilled milk-fed lamb is finger-licking good, it is the 'peasant salad' that is truly memorable.
It features a medley of 26 seasonal ingredients – from fresh, grilled and dried flowers and vegetables to delicate leaves – seamlessly tied together with a dressing of oregano, whisky vinegar and blueberries. If anyone can get me to eat and truly appreciate my vegetables, it is Somma's Puglian chef-partner Mirko Febbrile.
A millefoglie of layered lamb tongue slow-cooked in mead and aged lamb heart grated over the plate round off the dish.
Loquats star in the refreshing pre-dessert plated within a large ice cube. Yogurt and almond kernel panna cotta is wrapped in a delicate mochi skin, then topped with a chilled broth of lacto-fermented loquats, ginger, eucalyptus honey and osmanthus sorbet.
To finish, the main dessert highlights three types of corn – South American purple corn, Italian yellow corn and Hokkaido white corn – made into paper-thin wafers and paired with American Pale Ale ice cream and brown butter.
Where: 04-02 New Bahru, 46 Kim Yam Road
MRT: Great World/Fort Canning
When: Till Aug 16, noon to 1.30pm (Saturdays), 6 to 10.30pm (Tuesdays to Saturdays), closed on Sundays and Mondays
Info:
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