A Spoonful Of Sustainable Indulgence

For your year-end celebration, head over to these top restaurants in Singapore to enjoy sustainably farmed caviar served in consciously indulgent and delicious ways.

- ARISTA KWEK

Fatty, briny, and satisfyingly creamy. A gentle nudge of your tongue, and these tiny orbs, swollen with alluring flavours of the sea, burst open and coat your palate with a sweet and subtly salty pleasure that inevitably makes you reach for the next spoonful. As the Russian novelist Anton Chekov most aptly summarises the experience: “Ah, caviar! I keep on eating it but I can never get my fill.”

Black Gold

Caviar is one of the world’s most expensive foods. Procured from female sturgeons, the roe was first consumed by Persians who believed that the tiny eggs could boost one’s vitality.

Caviar soon found its way into Russian courts with tsars serving this delicacy at their lavish royal banquets (in fact, according to to author Niki Segnit, the children of tsars used to start their mornings with a sumptuous dish of mashed banana and caviar).

The Russians’ fondness for caviar soon saw it becoming a global player in caviar cultivation around the 18th century under the reign of Peter the Great. The emperor’s Europe-oriented mindset saw him establishing networks for exporting Russia’s caviar to the rest of Europe which too, had started to develop a taste for caviar.

Russia didn’t remain the only country to have a monopoly over caviar. In the early 19th century, the waters of America were discovered to be teeming with sturgeon, so much so that caviar was even being given away for free in bars. A German businessman, Henry Schacht, capitalised on this to establish a thriving caviar business in 1873, even re-exporting American caviar back to Europe.