Cure

Acidity brought to Keong Saik

Smoke gives the plate depth before it takes the room. Cure in Singapore is Chef Andrew Walsh’s first venture as Chef-Owner, built around a modern Irish tasting menu on Keong Saik Road. The Irish-born Walsh works from the idea of Nua, a word carrying a double meaning, Old Gaelic for Irish and modern Irish for new, and the name Cure comes from the Latin curare, to take care of. Before this room he cooked at Esquina in Singapore, where his small-plate work built the following that moved with him when Cure opened.

The station asks for translation without blur. Irish produce sets the frame, and the question at the pass is how soda bread, oysters, duck, stout, treacle, cider, horseradish, and beef hold their own accent while meeting a Singapore room. The answer is not fusion language. It is the hand knowing when salt should sharpen sweetness, when smoke should recede, and when a broth has done enough. Walsh works the floor as well as the pass, visiting tables himself, which keeps the kitchen’s intentions in earshot of the guest.

A tasting menu built on Irish material

The kitchen works in set-menu form, which gives the pass a narrow frame and a steady sequence. Cure’s known signatures carry the house clearly: Soda Stout & Treacle Bread, Galway Bay Oyster with Beef Tartare on oyster leaf, Queen Scallop with Cider & Horseradish, John Stone Beef with Cabbage & Truffle, and The 7 Tales of the Fox & Silver Hill Duck. The technique sits in the changes of texture and temperature: a bruléeed foie gras course with apple and cinnamon, pan-seared scallop with BBQ eel and sabayon, corned beef short rib with Cordyceps and Kampot pepper, kinmedai with squid noodles and laksa.

Those dishes are built to layer flavour in bite-sized portions rather than overpower the senses, which is a harder brief than it sounds. Pickles and preservation can cut through beef; citrus logic can brighten shellfish; smoke can lengthen a sauce without crowding the Irish material. Cure does not need the plate to explain itself through nostalgia. It lets the pantry do that work, then asks the cook to keep the edges clean.

The room kept close to the pass

The room is small, dark-toned, and kept at a conversational register, closer to fine-casual concentration than ceremony. Keong Saik Road brings its own movement outside, but inside Cure the attention narrows toward the counter, the pass, and the sequence of plates arriving in measured portions. The setting is polished without asking the guest to sit stiffly for it.

That restraint matters to the cooking. A tasting menu with stout bread, oyster leaf, duck, cider, horseradish, laksa, and truffle could become crowded quickly. The room gives the kitchen less noise to fight. Service carries the plates in a manner that suits the food: careful, direct, and not over-explained.

Irish produce through a Singapore room

Cure’s recognition includes One Michelin Star in 2024, attached to this Singapore house and its modern Irish direction. The award is a marker, not the method. The more useful evidence is in the recurring materials the kitchen returns to, and in the textural play that runs through the menu, from crispy chicken skin teriyaki to molten sweet corn croquettes. If the restaurant’s next movement is not stated in public, the craft still leaves a clear line to follow: the bread, the oyster, the duck, and the hand that keeps each course from becoming too loud. At Cure, that line runs through Soda Stout & Treacle Bread.