Intrepid Gastrobar

My old man turned 1 year older and asked that we celebrate at this new gastrobar he heard about.
«The Australian one. It has a pork platter for 4 people!»
I’m not one to go crazy over bush tukka or gourmet highfallutin coffee (since I don’t even drink coffee in the first place), but the sound of pork had me sold. I’ll get to the food first. My brother and I, upon looking at the Hog’s platter description and price on the menu, concluded fairly accurately that the platter wouldn’t serve more than 2 adults. My dad insisted it said 4 and that Australian portions are huge, we argued that this is Singapore and rent is high in the CBD so they are definitely not serving us an entire hog cooked 3 ways. Between our table of 5 young adults and 1 evergreen dad, we had the platter, 2 egg white salads, an onion soup, 2 orders of the crab cakes (the size is exactly the same whether as a starter or main), the fisherman’s fry-​up, kangaroo loin and the risotto.
We all had an enjoyable time and the food was decent. It’s decidedly Australian but not too exotic that you’re pondering whether you’re making a good life decision, which for example happens when you’re asked to eat fried insects in Wangfujing. I lied. We did have a short debate about eating kangaroo’s vs ostriches (at a restaurant in Science park) vs horses (in Austria and Japan). I mean it can’t taste worse than chicken right? The kangaroo loin was a fairly lean cut of protein enough for a grown man to eat well. I thought it was a under-​seasoned and kept mashing the apple bits into my meat to get some flavor. Not the knock out of the park I was hoping for. My seafood platter was pretty delicious — juicy mussels, shrimp and fish fried in a crisp batter and served with sweet potato fries — the classic fry-​up done well. The Hog’s platter was eaten clean but be warned, it feeds no more than 2. For dessert, we each tried the chocolate banana cake, the hazelnut crunch and tiramisu. I thought the hazelnut crunch was the most inventive and my dad liked the chocolate banana cake, which on the rich side. Wine and coffee received no protests whatsoever.
Intrepid has an interesting menu and a couple happily running the shop and that’s great to see as a customer. The food was decent but nothing to die for that would make me recommend it to others, except for the novelty of eating kangaroos. I’m divided as to be whether the space could be called a gastrobar. Methinks they need to push the bar element a bit better if they want to lure the profitable after work crowd. There’s a lot of competition down the row and having worked in the area for a while, I know you can’t survive selling to essentially a lunch crowd 5 days a week. I wish them the best of luck with this interesting joint!