Location: 30 Victoria St, Singapore 187996
Taste-type: Contemporary Japanese
Price: Hokkaido Ramen $17, Salmon Pink Dragon Roll $14.80
How to get there: MRT to City Hall. CHIJMES is opposite the emblematic Raffles Hotel, just next to Raffles City Shopping Center. The restaurant is on one side of the grassy lawn near the church: look for a sign outside a small doorway.
Contact: (65) 63363166
This was once a house of God. Now, it is a house of inebriated clamour, consumptive decadence, and God. For all its renovation and secularisation, the CHIJMES Hall still retains the church that was once the raison d’être of the place itself, a broodingly melancholic spire walled in by various restaurants, bars and other institutions of exorbitant leisure. CHIJMES stands for Church of the Holy Infant Jesus…Music and Entertainment Space, according to at least one exasperated taxi driver, and it is hard not to sympathise with the house of worship’s awkward plight. However, sympathy can get you killed or embroiled in a case of Stockholm Syndrome, and I am hungry.
Sun Japanese Dining fits the bill of a typical CHIJMES establishment: polished, unctuous, highly expensive. The discreet interior oozes modern-minimalist charm and has more smooth surfaces and shiny curves than a sexy robot, a thought infinitely more gauche than anything inside the restaurant. There is movement in the shadows of the entrance but I put this aside and slide into my seat, cautiously optimistic about the fare.
I just love noodles, and the Hokkaido ramen is a satisfying – if relatively pricey – specimen of one of my traditional favourites. The thick broth’s tart edge and lack of oiliness spruce up an otherwise typical dish, while each pork slice has been seared appetisingly before being layered atop the noodles. My only gripe is against the slightly starchy noodles which clump together like gawking teenagers at a Sexy Robot competition. I hear many sighs around me, of love or slit throats I cannot be bothered to discern. Sun’s atmosphere is a balm to my senses, dulling them enough for me to relax.
Unfortunately, the Salmon Pink Dragon Roll is little better than average, with little flavour to the salmon and crabmeat that comprise the majority of each petite roll. The only redeeming factor is, in my opinion, the vagueness of intention that accompanies the lemon slices atop each roll. To daintily remove, or chew up with the rice? I do both and conclude that the acidic crispness of the rind adds zest to this otherwise bland concoction.
I pay, bow, leave, and behind me the block containing Sun Japanese Dining bursts into sudden and radioactive flames. I am flung to the ground by the blast, suit seared like the pork eaten barely minutes ago. This is not my doing, nor that of any ninja. Slowly I clamber to my feet and look around, baffled as to who might take so much offence at this establishment to customarily irradiate it. There is nothing except the lick of flames and the church, staring blindly down upon me in stony silence as if to say this is your carelessness, Ninja. Atop one scorched cobblestone lies a tattered skullcap, with a small blue star on one side.
Concluding Remarks: Not too bad, but overpriced and over-rated. Even without the radiation, I would not recommend this spot except for those in love or with money to burn. Respect the church.
