At its former home in the Central Business District, Angie’s Oyster Bar & Grill was a mainstay for the office crowd seeking a decadent yet pocket-friendly meal. Its current location in the Tan Boon Liat Building may be a ways away from the hustle and bustle of town, but the philosophy when it comes to food has stayed the same: keep it simple, stupid!
At least, that’s the case when it comes to the final dish. In the kitchen, we’re told, it’s a constant rush of adjustments and tweaks to constantly improve and change things up where needed, likely the result of a focus on making things from scratch.
The new dinner menu at Angie’s exemplifies that approach to a T: deceptively basic dishes that make the most of its seafood ingredients while highlighting house-made everything from sauces to garnishes. There’s a four-course ($78++) and six-course ($98++) option here, with wine pairings available at $58++ and $78++, respectively. Angie’s also offers a range of kombuchas ($9), whose sweet-sour flavours pair well with the seafood.
The six-course menu comes with an additional trio of oysters, each minimally dressed with a variety of accoutrements. Our favourite here is topped with passion fruit ponzu; ever-so-slightly tangy, the passion fruit flavour is surprisingly mild, allowing the oyster’s brininess to shine. We’re not fully sold on the oyster paired with Tsuyataro cucumber and olive oil, but we’re told it’s been a hate-it-or-love-it creation from the start.
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Also a six-course exclusive is a slab of sourdough toast covered in ricotta and cranberry-apricot jam and batons of Granny Smith apples. One might be confused to see a dish like this on a dinner menu, since it looks more like it time-travelled from a Sunday brunch somewhere else, but it’s delightful nonetheless; the sour and sweet fruit and creamy ricotta (which takes some six hours to make in-house) is grounded back in savoury territory with the generously charred bread.
We then move into the items available on both menus, starting with an assortment of “blues”: bluefin tuna, blue swimmer crab and Galician blue prawn. The plating on raw beans is a bit of a trippy situation, as our fingers rush to catch the falling legumes with each bite. The tuna is paired with Japanese negi on crispy rice for an umami-sweet bite, while the crab comes in a slaw served on a spiced papadum. The prawn, paired with flying fish roe and leek, tastes decent enough, though the toast on the sourdough disc underneath works not quite as well as it did on the previous dish, with the char overpowering the prawn’s subtle flavours.
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A wedge Caesar salad is up next; served warm, it’s an unexpected retro presentation for a menu that’s otherwise quite contemporary. “Choose your own adventure,” we’re told, as we parry our forks and knives through the charred romaine heart to mix up our own concoction of dressing, anchovies and croutons. It’s smoky, decadent and intensely savoury, a profile boosted by parmesan polenta chips and bacon bits. We’ve never quite been fans of wedge salads, but this one may well change our minds.
For mains, Angie’s offers three options: a grain-fed Australian Hanwoo F1 ribeye, a cold-water lobster linguine, and a fish and chips duo with halibut and barramundi. By this point, though, our stomachs are too full to handle a sample of all three, and so we go for the beef and lobster.
Served medium-rare, the steak is grilled to perfection; a sliver of silverskin — an intramuscular membrane — is left in, but we chalk it up to an occasional butchering faux pas, and it doesn’t distract too much from the eating experience. Potato pavé on the side adds textural contrast and comes surprisingly crisp, unlike the fat-soaked versions one might find in the slew of Instagram clout-chasing eateries with an equivalent.
The lobster linguine, though, is where the real star lies. A charcoal-grilled Boston lobster is set atop rich marinara-soaked pasta. House-made lobster oil furthers the intense seafood punch that comes with each bite.
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Dessert comes in the form of a Singapore-coloured Eton mess: strawberry meringue with toasted coconut gelato and an array of toppings, including lychee pearls that add to the textural play in this fun end to the meal. The strawberry shines to its full effect here, supported by the delicate flavour of coconut.
Overall, Angie’s succeeds in its journey to keep seafood at the centre of its food — the food is comforting and easy, and while the effort that goes into each dish doesn’t always pay off, it’s good knowing you can get a dinner with this level of attention to detail at this price point. And just because it’s in an industrial building now doesn’t mean things have to feel lowbrow; the newly refurbished interiors could well belong in the heart of town, even if the surrounding area doesn’t quite scream elegance.
