Whenever I search for dinner places to hang out after work, this restaurant name keeps popping up in my searches, so I was really interested in visiting it for dinner. There was finally a chance to visit them when we wanted to find a chill dinner place for a farewell meal
Located at the cluster of colonial black-and-white buildings at Wessex Estate, the restaurant is surrounded by lush greenery and plants, giving it a vacation kind of vibes
Opened in 2021, Under Der Linden is a pet-friendly restaurant from the same people behind Le Jardin at Fort Canning. Having similar aesthetics, the restaurant is decked up with plants and fauna, giving an elegant botanical oasis vibe
To begin, we ordered the traditional sourdough bread served with in-house kombu butter, chargrilled broccolini with garlic chips and Djionaise sauce and crispy calamari fritters with umami sauce. The bread was soft and fluffy and paired well with the savoury kombu butter, but it was a little dry for me. The chargrilled broccolini was perfectly charred with nice smoky flavours while retaining the crunch of the vegetable. The garlic chips gave it a nice light garlicky punch, and the sauce balanced it up with a creamy, smooth, buttery finish. The calamari has a crispy and thin batter, so it is not overflowing with flour. Giving just enough crunch to the tender calamari inside, the batter skin picks up the sauce well, giving it a nice savoury flavour
For pasta, we ordered the chilli crab spaghetti, Maitake risotto, squid ink risotto and butter broth spaghetti. We ordered almost 4 out of the 5 pasta selections they had on the menu, and I left out the one with unagi, as most of the group did not like unagi. The pastas we ordered were all quite well done in terms of texture and flavours. All of them had a well-balanced flavour with al dente pasta texture. Surprisingly, the Maitake risotto, which is sweet white corn, was faintly sweet from the corn and extremely addictive and one of my favourites. The seafood in the other 3 dishes was fresh and plump, and I would say they are all quite on par in terms of standards
We wanted to order the cornflake chicken strip, but they ran out, so we only had the Iberico pork jowl, which was served with pickled cucumber, port wine sauce and kumquat cream. It took a while for the pork to be served, but the wait was worth it, as the meat had a glistening, charred skin with an extremely succulent and tender centre. The meat juices flow with each bite you take, and the pickled cucumber and kumquat sauce helps to cut the natural fattiness of the pork jowl cut of meat. As we were sharing most of the plates, this went empty pretty quickly
Overall, the food at Under Der Linden was definitely above average, with every dish having its own little surprises. Every dish did not disappoint and delivered what was expected of it. The bonus was the pet-friendly part of the cafe, which allows you to interact with many cute pets brought by the other diners when you are having a meal at the next table
Address: 5B Portsdown Rd, #01-02, Singapore 139311
Opening hours: 11 am to 3.30 pm and 5.30 pm to 9 pm ( Mon to Wed); 11 am to 9 pm ( Thu and Fri); 10 am to 9 pm ( Sat and Sun)
