Summer House

What is a summer house? It is a small building in a garden used for sitting in during fine weather like during summer. If you are wealthy your summer house could be a bespoke luxury summer house. Some of you are already living in a summer house. If you are a king, your summer house could be a palace and so you call it summer palace or perhaps an entire precinct or country side is yours.

In Singapore everybody lives in a summer house but not all comes with a garden or lush landscape. If you, like me have visited Seletar Base frequently in the past, you will know the history of the place being a British Army Camp, then an SAF Camp. There have always been quaint places in it, every road name is of course British and whenever you went there, you could surely feel that you were immersed into a British countryside. Birds chirping in the morning, fish in almost every drain, the flora and fauna and of course the lovely black and white colonial houses and bungalows. Of course if you lived there, it may be of a little inconvenience but the open space makes one wonder how nice it would be to live in one of those houses. 

Then there was the now defunct public golf club Seletar Base Golf Club or SBGC ran by Seletar Country Club which till today is still one of my favourite golf clubs and it always brings back fond memories as I started to really golf from there. The very nice club house mee siam from C'est Si Bon. This was also one of the most pressurised 1st tee anywhere because there is a queue waiting their turn to tee off and it was located at the club house where everybody were moving around or eating. The driving range was near the camp's gate/entrance at Piccadilly where you actually hit range balls from the real turf. Then one day aerospace came in, lesser people or perhaps the people that matters no longer understood the value of golf and everything was gone. Golf needs not be elitist, it can be shared with the rest. 

After sometime, I have driven past the area occasionally and also read about the F and B coming up  in the area. So I took to checking things up and as they say curiosity kills the cat and in this case, curiosity lightens the wallet. There is a small car park right in front of Summer House and on the ground floor Wild Seed Cafe greets you.

This is the Summer House. 

Plenty of air and space for you.

Or you may like your own igloo.

I read that the Summer House is run by Florian Ridder, a former sous chef of Alma by Juan Amador. The German is now chef de cuisine of the Summer House which is like a fine dining place. He has a fresh approach to how he wanted his food and what kind of flavours for his customers as his source of the freshest food comes mainly from Singapore and Malaysia. 

Meanwhile, at Wild seed Cafe below, your paw friends are welcomed. They also use locally sourced ingredients, they serve you salads, cakes, pastries, burgers and others. Things like Pulled Pork Burger, Cheese Cake and Coconut Churros. 

Summer House's menu is prominently displayed at the entrance of the stairway up.

Aha, there is a pub at the other end of Wild Seed. I showed this to a friend and he was happy. His dog does not know yet.

Decor is simple yet classy.

We found a comfortable corner.

The linguine was really fabulous. This Miso Shiitake Linguine comes with three grilled fresh prawns, spring onions and poached egg. Fabulous!

The Wagyu Cheese Burger (with melted Comte cheese).

Mud Crab Omelette with spring onion and Kampot peppercorn is quite unique.

This is the one to have - Panfried Seabass with grilled broccoli.

Back to my own burger. The bacon is deadly. 

Coffee is good. 

This dessert is simply called Rockmelon. It has rockmelon, lychee, lemon cloud, mango pudding and almond crumble. Whatever it means.

Oh, there is a scattering of pomegranate. Is it because the fruit looks like a grenade. It has been years since I ate pomegranate.

The ambience and surroundings cannot be faulted. Just farther up you will find the Wheeler's Estate. After walking around I was surprised to find a Teochew Restaurant - Di Wei Teochew Restaurant. There may be more new joints coming up in the area. More exploration may be needed.