This Restaurant Serves Great Sweet & Sour Pork — But It's Buried In Ice

This Singapore outlet is a joint venture between Palm Beach Seafood Restaurant; Tang Palace (China) Holdings, which owns Social Place in Hong Kong; and Indonesian company Gaia Culinary Concepts.

The space is tricked out in the brand’s signature look of marble-topped tables, gold-accented shelves and greyish blue banquette seats against vintage-patterned floors. What sets the Singapore outlet apart from the brand’s other branches in Hong Kong and Taiwan is a glossy feature wall made of mahjong tiles.

Fans of Social Place will be pleased to learn that all its signatures are available here and done well. The service is brisk but friendly, since the staff seem to be run off their feet thanks to the crowd of diners who have descended on this 128-seat restaurant on a weekday afternoon. Expect plenty of inventive dishes, like these adorable Truffle Shiitake Buns ($6).

This being our virgin experience at Social Place, we have our reservations when we see sweet and sour pork served not only moated with dry ice but also loosely buried in crushed ice. But surprise, surprise, this is one of the best sweet and sour pork dishes we’ve had in a while. The morsels of fried meat are delightfully tender and enrobed in an impressively crisp batter. And it’s only slightly chilled. Our host explains that shocking the freshly fried meat with ice helps to seal its crisp edges. The sweet and sour sauce that forms a thin glaze around the meat has a lovely rounded balance. It’s all so delicious, we really don’t mind that each bite comes with varying temperatures of hot and cold.

Light, silken slivers of foie gras are marinated in an aromatic rice wine that’s mildly sweet and earthy in equal measure. Served cold, this brightly flavoured appetiser is a great way to wake your palate for the meal to come.

We love a good deep-fried glutinous rice dumpling with a chewy mochi-esque interior and crisp exterior. These are as delicious as they come, and are shaped and coloured like mangosteens. What makes them extra special, though, is their lobster broth filling studded with bits of prawns and scallops. Despite sitting around for more than a few minutes while we say grace to the Instagram gods with our camera phones, their middles remain soupy and spill delectably when bitten into. The broth is full of flavour and the seafood impeccably fresh. We also love the little chocolate Pocky bits that stand in as mangosteen stems.

“Okay, these are just kong bak pau with a Western name, right?” we all but scoff. Until we take a bite of the spoon-tender slabs of pork belly lacquered in a sticky soy glaze tucked between pillow-soft mantou buns. They are deeply savoury but with a pronounced piquant edge thanks to the addition of pickled mustard greens and a dollop of peanut butter. Unconventional additions, but they made all the difference to this classic Chinese sandwich.

This cleanly flavoured pao fan swims with a mix of diced scallop, jasmine rice and orzo (pasta shaped like grains), which gives it a nice mix of textures. The seafood broth that underpins the dish is subtle and comforting, and we want to continue slurping it even though we’ve already had way too much to eat.

The familiar texture of old-school Chinese restaurant-style tenderised meat (you know, the kind that was softened with papaya enzyme back in the day) is inherent in this still-pleasant dish. The slivers of only slightly smoky beef that give easily to the bite are slicked with a sticky-sweet char siew sauce and lightly crusted with crushed black pepper. They taste more like a sweeter version of stir-fried black pepper beef than traditional char siew.

Whoever designed the mould for this irresistibly cute prone-position piglet should win a prize — it’s impossible not to want to photograph it and you almost feel bad eating it, especially when you’re carving its face off with your teaspoon. In any case, it’s a wholesome, yet rich dessert of full-fat milk pudding on a pool of lightly sweetened coconut milk. Order it for the ‘gram and Boomerang.

Rare is the restaurant that serves showy food that tastes as good as it photographs — and this one is the real deal. There’s just enough kitsch to get people excited about what it’ll do for their social media feeds, but also plenty of culinary finesse to ensure that the food is actually well-made and delicious.

Social Place is at #01-22 Forum The Shopping Mall, 583 Orchard Rd, S238884. Tel: 8870-2288. Open daily 11.30am-2.30pm; 6pm-10pm. Last orders at closing. www.socialplace.sg