Outside the sommelier-stocked walk-in cellar, the word Savelberg, the name of the restaurant and its progenitor, screams from a glossy cook book propped on a long row of uniformly red-bound volumes simply labelled “Michelin”.
It’s a nice metaphor for how this Dutch master of the culinary arts grounds his practice in classic French techniques and comes out on top. That the “old school” chef Henk Savelberg, 62, is a Netherlander shouldn’t surprise: French cuisine is open-sauce (sic). But the originality that he and his contemporary counterfoil Roxanne Lange, 31, bring to the oeuvre is a real eye-opener.
Located in a frontal wing of The Oriental Residence posh boutique hotel and apartments on Wireless, with the Dutch embassy auspiciously adjacent, there’s an upper gallery of private rooms and a ground floor dining room with double height ceiling and two glass walls.
Besides table centre flowers and, in the evenings, flickering candles and mood lighting, bright orange laminate panels are the only splash of primary colour in the ultra-modern decor, it being the signature shade of the Dutch royal family (and the one Low Country sports supporters Mexican-wave with).
The patriotic panels are juxtaposed with a shiny black marble floor, brilliant white walls, a chandelier where filaments culminate in bulbs like deflated putty balloons and an exquisite Buddha statue. It’s a best crystal, Robert Welch and white cloth affair but not the starched kind requiring a French laundry as well as French sauces.
Before opening this, his first restaurant outside the Netherlands, in early 2015, Savelberg closed his Michelin-star place in The Hague, the country’s seat of government, having been a luminary on the French fine dining scene for 30+ years. Savelberg Bangkok (www.savelbergth.com) being now his only restaurant, Henk is very-much hands-on.
Impeccably mannered restaurant manager Christian Vera alludes to “minutely detailed, visually breath-taking little appetizers and pre-desserts between highly conceptualized and stylized main dishes” comprising “the uniquely indulgent Savelberg experience.”
First evidence, after perfect sour dough baguette, is grilled watermelon/Iberico lomo ham on “a bit molecular” olive oil powder. Next up: “three preparations of pork”: pork belly/pork foam with pickled cucumber granit.; crispy pork skin/rhubarb/foie gras, and; mini burger/sour pork, smoked salmon and “a little molecular again” white asparagus powder.
Appetizer lobster tail salad with mild Thai red curry, asparagus, artichoke, sunflower and basil seeds and yuzu vinaigrette is luxuriant.
Grilled North Sea sole with baked asparagus, brioche of sasafair, smoked milk and lemon vinaigrette is equally self-evidently Michelin star-worthy.
Tartar of veal and green apple/creme fraiche & yoghurt sauce, crispy bacon cannelloni, potato sorbet, tzar caviar and gold leaf would surely tick all three Michelin star boxes.
Ditto Cape Grimm – 36-hours-cooked, insanely tender Wagyu beef cheek arranged on a hollowed out bone, slices of magnificently marbled, astonishingly yielding grass-fed striploin, and an onion crisp supporting a gorgeous gardenia of sauce and vegetal elements.
A pre-dessert, served in a silver chalice, pits strained vanilla-infused yoghurt against star anise, honey and cinnamon syrup, and yellow fruits granit..
Another ravishingly deconstructed apparition is the dessert of strawberry cheesecake, yuzu mousse, lemongrass ice cream, mandarin, strawberries and pomelo juice.
Labour intensive, requiring eight chefs down below and at the open finishing kitchen, there is a flurry of activity in the restaurant as well, with two servers per table.
Classic crooners complete an intensely sensual canvas.
