Just a few doors down, Bam! (No. 38; 65/6226-0500) lives up to the exclamation point in its name with a lively open kitchen that turns out inventive tapas with a Japanese twist: hand-rolled pasta a la plancha with prawns and sake butter; a sakura ebi (shrimp) omelet with aioli and rock melon; grilled kurobuta pork belly. There are a few wall-side tables in the narrow shophouse space, but the best seats are at the kitchen counter, where you can watch Spanish chef Pepe Moncayo—originally drawn to Singapore to work at the now-defunct Santi restaurant at Marina Bay Sands—and his team chop, grill, and whisk their way through orders. Bam! doubles as a sake bar, with a glass-walled sake chiller out front and a by-the-glass menu of five premium rice wines that pair well with Moncayo’s sharing plates.
Across the street, Jekyll & Hyde (No. 49; 65/6222-3349) has the surreptitious vibe of a speakeasy, and can be just as tough to find thanks to its nondescript entry. Push open the wooden doors, walk past the nail salon it shares space with, and enter a slim, industrial-style bar where ex–Bar Stories mixologist Jeff Ho crafts some terrific cocktails, including an old fashioned made with aged tequila and chocolate bitters.
And fresh from its February opening is Gattopardo (No. 34/36; 65/6222-7530), a seafood-centric Italian eatery that has relocated to Tras Street from its former premises at Hotel Fort Canning. Spread over two levels of a corner shophouse and augmenting its various dining nooks with alfresco balcony and courtyard seating, it’s the biggest restaurant on the block, with a crowd-pleasing menu to match: among Sicilian chef Lino Sauro’s standouts are grilled calamari in a bath of barley-studded prawn bisque, risone pasta with braised octopus and bone-marrow butter, and a fillet of John Dory accompanied by Jerusalem artichoke and pickled shallots in Prosecco broth. Save room for the nougat parfait—for now, it’s the most satisfying dessert on the street.
This article originally appeared in the April/May 2014 print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“Talking Tras”).
