Har Cheong Kai 鸡-ken Cutlet ($22++) When it comes to food that is a cumulation of various cultures and ideas that sprouted as a result of meandering from the norm (aka fusion food), there is somehow an inevitable formation of a grey area where the dishes become lacklustre and the fusion fails to even occur. Well thankfully, HĒ Bistro and Bar seems to lying comfortably, albeit just inches short of this uncertain area, serving up fusion dishes combining Western cuisine with Singaporean flavours. Their Har Cheong Kai 鸡-ken Cutlet ($22) arrives at the table looking like a simple chicken cutlet meal one can expect from a Western hawker stall, but a first bite of the crispy, golden-brown cutlet released that ever so familiar flavour of prawn paste chicken together with the thin but juicy deboned chicken drumstick meat. Served with a fresh salad, some fries (although written on the menu as criss-cut fries, I received straight-cut fries) and spicy chinchalok which gave a nice contrast of flavours. Their Chilli Crappy Pasta ($22) was however a fair bit of a let-down. The sauce was undesirably diluted and watery to say the least, and little of the actual chilli crab flavour was present. On the other hand, one of the sauces that managed to subdue my attention was the Kopi sauce used in their Kopi Ribeye Steak ($30), which seems to go surprisingly well with the beef given that coffee and meat is of course, a modern classic flavour combination. Suffice to say as a place serving fusion cuisine, there could definitely be more finesse in the execution of the dishes, despite its creative output.
