The Singular Restaurant

The Singular is a large boutique hotel in Santiago’s Barrio Lastarria and is home to one of the city’s best upscale restaurants. The Singular is a beautiful hotel, with a sophisticated, traditional décor and the small restaurant, accommodating about 24 diners, including a large table acceptable for up to ten diners.

The young waiters, clad in black vests and bowties, have been well-trained, and many have years of experience in the industry. Both waiters in the room in which I was dining spoke conversational or fluent English and were able to answer any questions about the menu.

The menu is an interesting mix of creative dishes utilizing meat and seafood from every corner of Chile’s expansive landscape, including a few wild-game dishes. Although billed as a French restaurant, there were no classics of French cuisine on the menu save a single dish, the Tournedos Rossini, a classic French dish allegedly concocted by the French master, Marie-Antoine Carême, in honor of an Italian opera singer, Gioachino Rossini, in the early 19th century.

But that said, the technique utilized in preparation of the dishes was clearly traditional French.

This the widest variety of unique proteins I’ve seen on a Latin American menu. There’s wild rabbit, duck, quail, guanaco (ostrich), king crab, oysters, and scallops to name a few. For a moment, I thought I was reading a National Geographic magazine rather than a menu.

On a recent visit I ordered the mixed salad with caramelized pears, the quail for the main course, and the house-specialty dessert called the Paris-Santiago.

The salad was a very interesting mix of greens and included a variety of small bits of cooked pears and other fresh fruit, dressed with a light, slightly citric, slightly sweet, honey dressing. It was, perhaps, the best salad I’ve been served in Latin America. It was impressively plated. As beautiful as it was delicious.

The main-course was two roasted quail-legs, described in the menu as being stuffed with foie-gras, which implies that the dish will be a stuffed breast of quail. The menu indicated it would be served on a corn-cream with spinach and a truffle-broth. As I stated, I was, in fact, served two quail legs, no corn-cream and I detected no truffle, or even a broth, for that matter. Instead the roasted legs were served on a wine reduction with pomegranate seeds. The seeds were slightly bitter and that, combined with the tartness of the wine reduction, created a sauce that was just slightly more bitter than I would have preferred.

The dessert followed. A layer of a slightly crisp chocolate cake, followed by a luscious chocolate mousse, and white-chocolate pastry-cream, royally crowned with three crisp candy tuilles. Tasty and impressive plating. But not extraordinarily unique or complex.

I was impressed by the variety of the menu and hope to explore the menu offerings further in the future. The salad was a big winner. I felt the sauce on the quail was a bit overpowering and I should have been told about the change of ingredients at the time the dish was ordered. I should have been told of the change in the ingredients in the main-course dish. The dessert was beautiful, but I think I’d order something different on a future visit.

The restaurant’s menu is not posted online. Fortunately, you can view menu on our website and the restaurant readily makes the menu available on request. Booking the reservation was simple through third-party booking service, Restorando.com.

The ambience, although pleasant, was lacking energy, and the music only made the austere environment more monotonous. This restaurant, although sophisticated, could use a shot of adrenaline. Even with these minor shortcomings, this is the only restaurant in the city where this caliber of French technique and unique, quality ingredients, can be found. That alone, warrants high marks for creativity.