Sum Yi Tai - Dining Club

Up on the second floor of the Sum Yi Tai shophouse, tucked down Boon Tat Street deep among the Singapore CBD’s skyscrapers near Telok Ayer station, is this multipurpose venue’s Dining Club, an elegant restaurant and private dining space offering more sizable portions and more of a sit-down experience than the downstairs tapas bar. However, like the entirety of Sum Yi Tai’s three zones, the carefully curated theme evokes the glamour of 1980s Hong Kong. Both lunch and dinner menus are dominated by classics of Chinese cuisine of peerless quality.

The brains behind Sum Yi Tai, Singapore’s slick F&B concept designers Coterie Dining Concepts, have hit the nail on the head with their seamless homage to 1980s Hong Kong gangland glamour. Starting with a tapas bar on the ground floor, moving up through this, the Dining Club on the second floor, to the private rooftop area boasting a rare glimpse up from on top of a Telok Ayer shophouse to the glittering spires of Singapore’s central business district, the aesthetic sensibilities informing each space are impeccable.

The Sum Yi Tai Dining Club tones down the tatts and Triads grunge of what has to be Telok Ayer’s most thematically powerful tapas bar, going for a softer look with silk paintings, chrysanthemums, and jade-green walls. It’s here that Sum Yi Tai opens out into a Chinese restaurant offering classic dishes in a setting of supreme elegance, aided and abetted by a fantastic selection of wines, whisky, sake, and Chinese tea. If you’re booking in for lunch at Sum Yi Tai’s Boon Tat Street address, we recommend the chef’s special gong bao chicken with dried chilli and cashew nuts, and for dinner, the signature whole Boston lobster in a bei fung tang style or the slow-roasted Spanish suckling pig. Be warned, Singapore foodies: be sure to make a note when you book if you’re after this last dish as it requires a 48-hour advance order.