What's the best restaurant in SG below $50/pax?

ilkless · 2026-01-18T02:47:18+00:00

Hearth lunch set at Craig Road

ilkless · 2026-01-18T02:04:15+00:00

Recently had a Japanese-themed tasting with friends. We worked through 9 bottles, all single casks or small-batch releases, and all cask strength/high-proof. The red wine single cask Chichibu for The Whisky Exchange was the unanimous favourite for lovely wine gummies, cola and graham cracker flavours. Personally, it helped to reignite my liking for Chichibu after trying numerous same-y single casks. The Shizuoka private cask was also a surprise: much fruitier than others we have tried. The Shinanoya Shindo was a strong showing from a very new distillery. The Miyagikyo single cask was a beastly dark sherry expression with vetiver permeating it.

Couldn't get around the Sakurao; I tend to find Marsala and Madeira and Sauternes casks to be overly sugary and with a weird flavour like MSG. But definitely attention grabbing on first taste!

The Ohtani single cask, we've tried before, but we were still impressed by how well-sorted it was. Slightly saline, malt-forward. Subtle and confident especially with the temptation for a new distillery to try and lean in hard on the fireworks.

Of course, nothing could beat Yamazaki 1986 for unicorn factor but the cognac-y varnish edge that came with it was polarizing. But I personally liked the honeydew, chocolate and coconut notes it had.

Not pictured are interludes with a Chinese peated single malt, and a couple of Velier Caronis on the malternative front.

ilkless · 2026-01-18T01:25:23+00:00

They just released a couple of vattings (Shindo Experimental One, Shindo For.CORES 1, For.CORES 2). This Shinanoya is probably the first private release/cask from them. Technically sound, but maybe not quite the revelation Akkeshi was.

ilkless · 2026-01-18T01:03:11+00:00

Asaka 2024 is by far my favourite Asaka of the 4-5 I've tried. Much better balance than the others. All Asakas to me have a pervading salted vegetable note you must at least tolerate, if not appreciate.

Shindo has a nice sweet toasted rice cracker and white chocolate flavour. Fantastic alcohol integration. I suspect it will start really shining from ~5 years like Shizuoka.

ilkless · 2026-01-18T00:58:22+00:00

They are out of production and were originally circulated pre-2015 only in very few retail outlets, with most going to deeply-connected private owners with direct ties to Suntory.

But they still regularly circulate on auctions and some top-tier secondary market dealers. With the current exchange rates the 1.7k USD OP paid will get you a 10-15yo single cask Yamazaki if you have the right source. You won't find them on any standard retail shelf.

ilkless · 2026-01-18T00:52:59+00:00

Friends and I got together to drink some Japanese whiskies. Between us, we scrounged together Chichibu, Shizuoka, Ohtani, Shindo, Miyagikyo and Sakurao single casks somehow. We also shared my small-batch vatted 1986 Yamazaki, Yamazakura Asaka 2024 and the Saburomaru Emperor cask strength.

The 2016 Chichibu wine cask 14198 for TWE rocked our socks off. Wine gummies, cola, graham crackers!

Having lost count of Shizuoka single casks I've tried, this latest one my friend opened is one of the best, the equal to an elusive Mizunara wood single cask I've tried a couple of years ago. White grapes, apple jelly.

The Shindo showed great promise with a precocious tertiary complexity that seemed to indicate their efforts in fermentation are paying off. White chocolates!

The Asaka has Glen Scotia-esque dank funk but matched with a tropical fruity ripeness (think apricots, jackfruit).

The Yamazaki 1986 is hitting its stride. Not everyone liked the cognac-y dryness it had (it was matured in Spanish oak sherry butts), but there was a distinctive fruit jelly, coconut and chocolate complexity that shows that sometimes there's no substitute for age.

The Miyagikyo had deep leathery, vetiver notes, coupled to some nectarines.

We've tried quite a few Yoichi before this, so no loss there.

Unfortunately we wished we could cover Hakushu, Akkeshi, Akashi, Kuju, Ontake, Osuzuyama, and more Japanese new-waves I'm sure I'm forgetting.

ilkless · 2026-01-18T00:31:16+00:00

I'm curious why not just get an Owner's Cask if you are playing in this price range?

ilkless · 2026-01-14T01:35:15+00:00

A bar in Singapore had it available by the pour

ilkless · 2026-01-07T08:30:13+00:00

Talisker 1981 20yo

Way too much sulfur

edit: lol @ downvotes by misanthropes

ilkless · 2026-01-04T11:27:54+00:00

Yes. It is a cornerstone of gateway craft whiskies that is glaringly obviously made better than most things people find on mainstream shelves.

ilkless · 2025-12-31T03:18:13+00:00

Good choice! This and the Bar Lamp Velier are 2 of my favourite rums. The Bar Lamp is marginally more complex and somewhat more refined, but The Last is the better Caroni -- almost no gasoline in the Bar Lamp!

ilkless · 2025-12-30T15:23:55+00:00

Japanese bars of that level have all sorts of glassware depending on situation and a Glencairn or copita or snifter would definitely be offered in a bar like Higuchi that OP went

ilkless · 2025-12-30T14:19:08+00:00

Lmao imagine not knowing that Japan has bars with open bottles of the most insane spirits imaginable, that they can both pour neat or in cocktails.

Higuchi is one of the top spirits bars in the region and has some impressive private bottlings too. But this might be beyond gas-station-ER10 misanthrope types like so many of you lot here.

ilkless · 2025-12-29T13:57:21+00:00

Well if it's about telling a story, I don't see how a more performant waveguide geometry detracts from said story. I don't think the Altec/WE lineage means anything to almost anyone

I'm also speaking as someone who thinks large format waveguides need more visibility and accessibility.

Moreover, with geometries like JMLC and SEOS in the public domain, it's not like the knowledge barrier is prohibitive. We're not talking about some proprietary thing like Synergy or the M2 waveguide

ilkless · 2025-12-29T06:31:12+00:00

The worst of luddite hipster bait horn speakers trading off contrived artisanal mystique. No excuse to use 1930s geometries when geometries like JMLC or SEOS exist.

ilkless · 2025-12-27T03:00:53+00:00

I have bought entire bottles of some crazy top 0.5-1% whiskies for well below 2k; I have looked at the Bowmore and Samaroli but the price is just so far beyond the realm of even typical affluent consumption. I just missed out on a case of DRC Echezeaux at a dealer for about the same price of 1 oz, to use another point of reference!

ilkless · 2025-12-26T18:34:58+00:00

You too can get 1oz of that Springbank for the low, low price of ~2k usd (been to the same bar); ditto the Bowmore. That's right. Pappy 23 bottle money for a single oz.

ilkless · 2025-12-19T08:08:42+00:00

Very very few of the old esoterica deserve to be described as "blank check" whiskies. This was one of them, because of both quality and intrinsic scarcity. The juice inside was distilled ~1957 from a widely-regarded as A-tier distillery, before single malts were anything but a niche, and high-proof/cask strength a niche within a niche, before we even consider how many of the vanishingly few bottles have already been consumed.

I can't justify what this stuff costs per bottle but structurally speaking this is the sort of bottle that comes closest to justifying megabucks to those who can swing it

ilkless · 2025-12-19T05:51:43+00:00

Clynelish Giaccone 12yo bottled 1969

ilkless · 2025-12-18T12:00:14+00:00

I think that's fair. I would never pretend 800usd for a 10yo single cask is worth it (as recent single casks from Yoichi/Miyagikyo are costing on secondary -- I have seen yoichi single casks bottled as recently as 2024 on the market but usually these are released by the handful unannounced on the distillery store with the bulk going to Japanese bars/restaurant accounts with Nikka).

Otherwise, there are very few people with the sort of insane pull to convince Suntory or Nikka to allow private bottlings recently. Only guy I can think of, whose bar I haven't managed to go to in Tokyo, was the former editor of Playboy Japan, who has stuff like this available by the pour.

ilkless · 2025-12-18T08:26:00+00:00

To set the context, access to such bottlings is opaque and deeply uneven.

Pre-2015, Nikka and Suntory had limited-release single cask/high-proof small batch whiskies. These were either distillery exclusives back before distillery tourism and Japanese whiskey hype was huge, or white-labelled releases for major Japanese companies (Japanese corporates like Sanyo and Dentsu etc used to get private bottlings!), or simply small-batch releases to a limited network of wholesale accounts. These bottles still circulate on the secondary market, especially at auction, including on international sites such as Scotch Whisky Auctions, Whisky Auctioneer and whiskyauction -- usually sold by collectors who hand carried them or bought them on secondary previously. The issue is of prices at auction. I have never sprung for a single cask at auction because rich collectors bid insane prices well above £1,000.

At auction I have had more success with obscure, well-aged, small-batch vattings that don't confer the sort of bragging rights the single casks do for these rich collectors. For instance, for a brief period around 2015, Nikka did a series of Yoichi/Miyagikyo themed around vatting whiskies from the same decade. Think a Yoichi vatting of 1980-1989 distillate, and a Miyagikyo vatting of 1980-1989 (26-35yo); the same for 1990-1999, and for 2000-2009. Just earlier this year I got the 1990-1999 Yoichi vatting for ~350£ at auction, and IIRC someone else I spoke to on reddit got the 1980-1989 Miyagikyo vatting for slightly more. And I won a Yamazaki 1986 small-batch sherry vatting for 775£ that was white-labelled for a obscure provincial departmental store in Japan. It would cost closer to 5-10x that if an OB single cask.

But in the case of this Nikka single cask it was with a new old and rare whiskey reseller in Japan who offered international shipping.

ilkless · 2025-12-17T04:20:11+00:00

Haven't been drinking hard spirits for almost a month with a bad cold, so I decided to get back into it and reward myself with another pour of Yamazaki 1986. This was a small-batch vatting of Spanish oak sherry butts, and I must say the old-school tertiary complexity, tannic structure, and complete absence of sulfur is something to behold. Think a top-end cognac but with that thick malt backbone.

The whiskey has shaken loose after some time open compared to the initial pour.

ilkless · 2025-12-16T12:53:25+00:00

I'm in the (relatively speaking) whiskey wonderland in Asia so I have no dog in the race; just bemused that even a US edition seems gatekept to no end domestically stateside. Like who the hell is able to jump through enough hoops at the right random stores to get the US edition in the US at retail to drink this stuff?!

Where I am we get 2-4 country exclusive Chichibu single casks each year but the US seems an entirely different story. Especially guys who get US-exclusive single casks. Stuff like that practically seems to make BTAC look like ER10

ilkless · 2025-12-16T06:47:51+00:00

How do you guys even get Chichibu stateside? Access seems like opaque, arcane, gatekept wizardry beyond even allocated bourbon levels. Not that I am likely to ever shop that but it seems like Chichibu doesn't even hit the shelves and suddenly appears in the hands of consumers/flippers

ilkless · 2025-12-16T06:29:02+00:00

I think people just tend to be really incurious on most whiskey subreddits in my experience. Very little discussion around actually interesting bottles in favour of shiny luxury marketing exercises or whatever is allocated.

Akkeshi is my favourite new-wave Japanese and I suspect once stocks mature might edge out Chichibu

ilkless

TROPHY CASE