Pura Brasa Spanish restaurant - 8th Nov 2017
We headed out for
family dinner on Sunday to Pura Brasa Spanish restaurant. It is a restaurant
chain from Barcelona and opened here a few months ago at Tanjong Pagar Centre.
As I read on their website, “Pura Brasa was created by Josper®, the
internationally recognized brand of charcoal ovens, with the aim to be a place
to give ideas to Josper’s customers and teach them how to implement the grills
and ovens and the variety of applications they have. Eating at Pura Brasa is
the best way to see how the Josper® technology works.”
The décor of the place is modern and casual with a cow similar to ours at Huber’s but painted differently at the entrance of the restaurant. The menu, done in the style of a newspaper, features a good amount of tapas and main dishes. We started with some tapas of grilled mussels. They highlight that this dish is not steamed nor a la marinara but instead grilled directly on the Josper. I thought it would come dry however they served it with some white wine and garlic stock. The mussels had a good smokiness from the grilling and went well with the stock that it had in the shell however the actual stock was too salty to drink on its own.
The Spanish omelette was served with some pan con tomate.
The omelette had a hard skin but cut into it and it revealed a soft runny
interior that contained some small pieces of spicy chorizo. A dollop of aioli
completed the omelette which was enjoyable on the nicely crisp bread. The next
dish was prawns sautéed with garlic, chilli peppers and olive oil. The prawns
here was big and crunchy although my only gripe about this dish was that the
olive oil did not have enough flavour of infused garlic. When you dipped the
bread in some of the oil, you had to eat the slices of garlic in order to taste
it. The last tapas dish we had was the pedron peppers. I always liked eating
this fried peppers that are served simply with sprinkled sea salt.
For the mains, we started with an ordering of Butifarra
sasuage. Buttifarra in Barcelona comes in a few varieties but the one we got
here is the raw pork version which is then cooked with the Josper. The sausage
was nice and meaty and was served on the quintessential pairing of del ganxet white
bean and some chopped vegetables. Next we had the Aubergine au gratin and
served with romesco sauce. The eggplant really showcased the Josper grill very
well. The vegetable was cooked to a soft mousse like texture and the best way
to eat it was to scrap it off the skin of the eggplant which was charred. The
flesh was delightfully sweet and you didn’t need to add the sauce in order to
enjoy it.
Next we had a serving of the Black Angus entrecote. The beef
was served with some chimichurri on the side and some sliced peppers and
zucchini. The beef was tender and tasty although I felt the smokiness of the
Josper did not transfer sufficiently to the meat. Maybe it needed to be cooked
past medium rare in order to have more time in the oven. The paella here is
quite unique. The version here is moister than other versions with a sweeter
flavour rather than the savoury seafood stock taste. We were joking that this
paella was adapted to Singapore palettes just like how Chinese dishes is
altered when you go to Western countries to suit their palettes. Don’t get me
wrong it was still enjoyable to eat but just not the usual paella taste and
texture.
The food here cannot be compared to some of the more fine
dining Spanish restaurants but neither can the price. It is a restaurant that
you can bring your family to and enjoy Spanish food without burning a hole in
your pocket.
~Executive Director, Andre Huber
