Maison Yoshoku serves dessert on levitating plates at Raffles City

Singapore has had dessert omakase before. It hasn't had one where the plates float.

Go in the afternoon, not for dinner. Maison Yoshoku's reason to exist is what it calls Singapore's first floating dessert omakase: small courses arriving on levitating magnetic platforms, as odd and as photogenic as that sounds, and the sort of thing you book once for a date or a post-museum treat in City Hall. It opened on 23 September on the third floor of Raffles City, in the space that used to be MoVida, and it is really three restaurants in one: hitsumabushi sets at lunch, the dessert bar through the afternoon, yoshoku and izakaya bites at night. Surrey Hills Group runs it, with chef Lamley Chua in the kitchen.

The dessert sequence, Seven Memories, follows the Japanese seasons, and if you're coming for the gimmick, book all seven rather than stopping at three or five. Haru no Kaori opens with green apple, lemongrass and kaffir lime. Suika no Natsu is watermelon, coconut and sago. Fukami turns savoury with truffle, charcoal, black garlic and cocoa nibs, and Akamiso to Shiso pairs red miso and red shiso with raspberry and pimento. The savoury turn in the middle is the course we'd most want to see, because it is the one most dessert bars wouldn't risk.

Lunch is the more practical reason to be on level 3. The rice comes divided into quarters and you eat it four ways: with salt, with demi-glace, with pickles and finally with dashi poured over, ochazuke-style. Dinner is lobster bisque chawanmushi, a foie gras monaka sold by the piece, Kurobuta pork and a house bouillabaisse, in a room done up like a wine cellar, all warm wood and leather around an open kitchen. Pleasant enough, but the floating plates are the reason to come here rather than somewhere else.

Book through Oddle (reservations are recommended), aim for mid-afternoon, when the dessert bar has the floor, and keep your hands off the plates; they are doing the work.

Good to know Maison Yoshoku is at #03-43 Raffles City Shopping Centre, 252 North Bridge Road, near City Hall MRT. It's open daily, 11.30am–10pm, and the dessert omakase runs 3pm–10pm (last order 9pm). It costs S$25 for three courses, S$35 for five and S$45 for seven. Reservations are recommended, through Oddle.

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Maison Yoshoku | 252 North Bridge Road, #03-43 Raffles City Shopping Centre, Singapore 179103