Meat Me At The Raffles

The 'chef's table' is an exercise in indulgence and passivity, but some tweaking is required. An Executive Chef at Raffles Hotel has his head on the block, and a 'short back and sides' is not on the menu. Andrew Leci hates himself for not loving everything.

- Andrew Leci

Chef Jordan Keao was born and grew up in Hawaii. I doubt, however, that he’d be in favour of including pineapple as a pizza topping. Who in their right mind would? Inculcated from an early age in the joys of wood-fire cooking—family barbecues, community cookouts, all that malarkey—Keao has managed to turn the process into a fine dining art, understanding the almost alchemical interactions involved when applying a type of heat to certain raw ingredients. Try channelling cavemen after the discovery of fire and the realisation that raw meat tasted so much better (and was easier to digest) when it wasn’t raw.

As Executive Chef at the Raffles Hotel’s meatery otherwise known as Butcher’s Block, Keao has been given free rein to impose his culinary philosophy on an establishment whose past has been as chequered as a conventional trattoria’s tablecloth. Rooted in his roots, he wants his clientele to appreciate what lies at the heart of his personal food ethos, which is respect for the elemental, and genuflection at the altar of the finest ingredients. Chef keeps it simple, except when he doesn’t, and creates invariably mouthwatering and satisfying dishes that have now been curated to form a new offering: the chef’s table. Drum roll, please.