A Masterchef Alum Opens a Southeast Asian Wine Bar and Restaurant Just North of the Harbour Bridge
Sarah Tiong’s childhood calamansi tree was such a prolific fruiter, her mum put the delicate, earthy citrus in everything.
“Mum would dry the calamansi to add to teas throughout the winter, put it in cordials in summer and add it to sauces. It was something we always had. We didn’t eat lemons or limes; we ate calamansi.”
“My mum and I grew this little tree together in our backyard, and it became a massive, established tree,” says the chef and Masterchef alum. “Mum would dry the calamansi to add to teas throughout the winter, put it in cordials in summer and add it to sauces. It was something we always had. We didn’t eat lemons or limes; we ate calamansi.”
It’s only fitting that Tiong should name her first solo restaurant Calamansi. The chef intended it to be a wine bar, but it’s quickly become a cosy neighbourhood haunt with a menu full of dishes that reflect the food she ate growing up. For example: the silky, golden chicken curry, which she says some customers eat three times a week. “The dish is lovely and warming. It’s a Peranakan-style curry with a bit of tamarind. There’s a lot of spice, coriander seeds, it’s heavy on shallots and garlic to build a flavourful base. And it’s got to have potatoes – the potatoes make it. They thicken the sauce and suck it up as well.”
Fans of Ogni, the now-closed Surry Hills venue Tiong opened with chef Rashedul Hasan (another Masterchef alum), will remember Tiong’s mum’s achar, a Penang-style, sweet, sour, spicy pickle served with prawn crackers and bitternut chips.
There are also dishes that reflect her fine-dining skills, like chicken wings painstakingly deboned and stuffed with scallop and prawn mousse, and the Singapore chilli crab croquettes that evolved from a dish comprising a cone of crab meat topped with salmon roe. “It was very pretty, but it didn’t sell because people didn’t know what it was. As soon as I turned it into a croquette, we sold out three days of prep in a single Tuesday.”
For Tiong, food is how she related to her mum. “In a Chinese Malay family, your mum is the figurehead. You don’t relate to her as a friend because she’s a decision-maker. In my family we overcame that through cooking. My mum was private about her childhood, but we broke through that barrier when she’d show me recipes and would reminisce about her own mum’s cooking.”
That feeling of family and belonging is what Tiong wants to create at Calamansi. The venue bears her fingerprints beyond the menu, with Tiong and her staff spending weeks fitting out the space themselves, installing the banquette seating, the live-edge timber bar and the backlit wine shelves that hold a growing collection of wines, many from female winemakers.
Tiong’s mum passed away in 2020, so she wasn’t able to see her daughter’s latest success. Tiong imagines her reaction. “I think my mum would say, ‘You know what? Good thing you made the decision to do this and backed yourself. It was the right decision.’”