Over the top

This is actually my second time of writing this piece, so apologies to those of you who await each new post with bated breath and who read this last week only to discover, when you went back for a re-read,  that it had disappeared ( I realise that this is a very small pool of people, in which probably only one person  - my sister - swims, but hey). It was the darnedest thing.  I'd written it, published it, then went back in to add something and the next thing I know I'd managed to make it disappear - text, photos and all.  Weird.  

So this is my second go at describing our over the top experience at the Marina Bay Sands hotel two weekends ago.  My regular readers will know that Chris and I went to the first of the integrated resorts on Sentosa shortly after it opened, and we we were mightily disappointed - hence the title of that post, "Casino banal".  We'd had our share of disappointment too on our first visit to the Marina Bay Sands hotel.  The Chinese restaurant there was the scene of the most expensive plate of rice in the world episode, which I wrote up in the "Baywatch" post - but this visit changed all that.

Spending the night in a hotel in our home city is not something we do very often; in fact, this is only the second time we've done it since we've been living here.  The first was on Valentine's Day this year, when Chris booked us into the aptly named Scarlet hotel for a night of romance.  On this occasion, a dear friend had given us a night at the hotel as a present, knowing how fascinated I am by the architecture (see picture) and how much I was looking forward to swimming  in the world's highest and longest infinity pool, more of which later.  Chris was already there when I arrived, lounging on the king size bed of our luxurious room on the the 42nd floor.  I have never been prone to vertigo, but I must admit to a slight nervousness when looking out of the floor to ceiling windows on this occasion.  That said, the views are absolutely stunning.  We had booked dinner in Santi, one of the "celebrity restaurants" but we wandered up to the skypark on the 56th floor (the boat shaped thingy that straddles the three hotel towers) for a pre-dinner drink and to take in the views of the city as darkness was falling.  It was quite magical.  If you are ever travelling to Singapore on business, or stopping over on the way to somewhere else, think about treating yourself to a night here.


We weren't sure what to expect from dinner at Santi.  The restaurant is the Singapore outpost of a Catalan restaurant run by a chef called Santi Santamaria, of whom I'd not heard previously.  The basic premise is "cocina de mercado", i.e.  "market cuisine,  whereby the menus revolve around what is good in the market on the day.  Now I can understand this approach in Barcelona, or any large European city, but given that Singapore has no agriculture to speak of, it does sound a bit strange (and by strange I think I probably mean pretentious) as an approach to cooking here.  However, the speciality of Santi is fish, and Singapore does,. in fact, have a fish market, which is something I didn't know before writing this post.   In any case, I needn't have worried.  The food was tremendous.  Of particular note (ironically, given our previous experience) was the dish called "seafood rice".  The simplicity of the description belies the complexity of the flavours and the downright deliciousness of the dish, which I won't even try to render here for fear of sounding pretentious myself.  It was scrummy!


As with almost all of the Singapore restaurants we have visited, the service was a let down.  When we arrived, a dozen waiting staff were milling around, looking as though they didn't know what they were really doing - which turned out to be pretty much the case.  Well intentioned, but lacking the organisation of the firm hand of a good maitre  d'.  We didn't mind the wait between courses, as it gave us the time to savour what we had just eaten as we anticipated the next event.  That said, if Singapore wants to take its place in the top echelons of the restaurant world, it's going have to do a whole lot better on the service front.


Delicious as dinner was, the highlight of the experience for me was definitely the next morning, when we made our way to the 56th floor to take in the rays and frolic in the infinity pool.  The photo gives a great sense of the views and the "infinity experience" but not the length of the pool, which takes up about two thirds of the skypark.  It was truly incredible.  Here's a haiku:


The top of the world
is a great place to visit.
Infinitely so.