How absurb can a restaurant concept truly be? Well, quite actually. You can sit on an ice chair to eat off an ice plate in an ice lounge in Dubai, sit through a 7.8 magnitude earthquake (quite literally) in one in Spain or dine inside a prison cell in China. Thankfully, Restaurant Absurdities is more sane than some.

Instead of spoiling you too quickly, here, co-founder of Restaurant Absurdities Stuart Wee tells us more.

How would you pitch Restaurant Absurdities in 10 words or less?
Fun, metamorphosis, immersive, physical and interactive dinner. Absolutely absurd!

Black Dunes at Restaurant Absurdities.

What was so interesting was that customers are encouraged their inhibitions at the door. How far would you encourage them to do so?
With expectations comes standards. The issue is, with a restaurant like ours, which is the only one of its kind in the world, who would you compare us to? We want to offer guests something out of the norm, an experience that takes them out of their comfort zone of what they have defined in their mind as a sit down dinner.

First Class Cabin at Restaurant Absurdities.

We want to redefine the dining experience. A sit down eight course two hour long dinner is great, but wouldn’t it be fun if each course happened in a different room, and the room is actually related to the course, and the person serving you the food is actually dressed to match everything you are experiencing in that room? And wouldn’t it be even more fun and absurd to move to another room for an entirely new experience for the next course?

We want our guests to let their guards down, expect the unexpected and roll with it. The goal is to keep them guessing, surprise surprise!

Tree of Old at Restaurant Absurdities.

Why are there a specific number of rooms for Restaurant Absurdities? Why six, actually?
At Absurdities, food is the focus and we had six dishes we wanted to put forth as part of the experience, so we created the rooms and concepts with that in mind! We also wanted to design rooms that can host an intimate group of 8 each time, which meant we could comfortably fit up to six rooms within the space we have.

Of course , Singapore’s COVID regulations meant we had to reduce the number of pax in each room to six to meet the two pax dining rule.

Sorcerors Library at Restaurant Absurdities.

I feel like the new dining trends include small plates and some kind of return to simple food. Do you think menus like Valhalla and the Chambers of Asgard or Around the World in 80 Days Book Analysis Workshop still hold water today?
We just ate at Sommer, where a British chef has done amazing complex dishes using Japanese ingredients, but it wasn’t sushi. We don’t do fusion either. The food served in all our concepts are heavily researched, and we spend at least three months on R&D before we finalise and put the dishes on the menu.

For Around the World, we kept the authenticity of the dishes like when on ship with a French captain, the guests get to try Bourride which is a cuisine of Provence and when tracking through the jungles of Kolkata, a history lesson on Butter chicken and Dosa is served alongside the actual dishes. Likewise with Absurdities, an absurd menu requires precision for it to be surprising, interesting, and delicious.

The Kitchen at Restaurant Absurdities.

What is your favourite room then at Restaurant Absurdities and why?
I think every room is my favourite as it is the fruition of my fantasies, it’s really hard to pick one.But if I absolutely have to pick one, then it will probably be Asylum Coffeehouse, which is a service-first (and coffee a close second) cafe we started because we wanted to inject a little more hospitality, warmth and friendliness to the local cafe scene.

In the day it’s a cafe with the friendliest staff and in the night, it transforms into the first room of the Absurdities experience. Interestingly, Asylum also houses 6 different doors, each representing a volume of worlds existing within. This year, guests will enter Volume 1 and sometime next year, we’ll open Volume 2.

Mama’s Famous Cereal Chicken Pot Pie at Restaurant Absurdities.

Why did you have Chef Ang do an omakase menu? And more specifically, is there any interesting story behind one of the courses?
The Omakase menu was intentional to facilitate trust. Omakase means trusting in the expert in Japanese and can be used on anything from getting a haircut to getting a house renovated.

Being our chef since 2016, Chef Jason has proven to be versatile and proficient in an array of cuisines especially French. His willingness to work with me in designing a culinary experience that is both exciting and delicious has been nothing but exhilarating. We are constantly pushing boundaries. For example, I wanted our guests to have a dish that is not quite what it seems in the sorcerer’s apprentice’s room.

We made squid ink risotto with no rice and no squid ink but turned the dish purplish black, then we paired it with edible glass. It is a play on textures and things you wouldn’t think would pair well together but it surprisingly does!

Smoked Quail Tajine at Restaurant Absurdities. 

How important was it to you that the dishes have to be primarily crafted from common ingredients?
Not as important as crafting a truly unique immersive absurd dining experience. In fact, we don’t use many common ingredients in Absurdities. For example, we serve quail which, by the way, is perfection in my opinion. We also do a 3D printed reverse mould telephone alcoholic gold leaf jelly for dessert, nothing you’d find anywhere else.

We live in absurd times, the most ideal time to open a restaurant called Absurdities, so why use or do anything common?

Mystical jungle + suburban American kitchen + Moroccan tent at Restaurant Absurdities: are you perhaps, pining to go to these places?
100%, they are on the bucket list once travel opens up further. Also, as much as we are surrounded by lush greens in Singapore, somehow I still enjoy creating jungles and guests still enjoy being in one. I guess it might be the air conditioning?

A bit of a loaded question but can something ever be too absurd for you? What would make you go “not thanks, fam”?
Yeah, I think having a half alive chick found in an egg (I am sorry I don’t mean to offend my Filipino friends), but Balut is probably my limit.

Lastly, out of curiosity, what’s the #1 song on your Spotify this year?

Minority by Green Day!

Once you’re done with this story, click here to catch up with our November 2021 issue!