Made with stiffly beaten egg-whites and baked in a ramekin to puff up into a tower of billowing beauty, the classic French dessert of soufflé is not very commonly found in restaurants in Singapore. Maybe because it's a temperamental creature that calls for precise execution and temperature control; or because it's a dish that can only be made a la minute and requires quite a bit of waiting from impatient Singaporean diners. Yet, a chic downtown bistro catering to the time-strapped CBD crowd (and ladies who lunch, too) has chosen to specialise in this dish. Beyond the common sweet options, it also offers savoury souffles which are pretty to hard to come by outside of France.

Souffle, a simply-named new restaurant by Déliciae Hospitality Management (DHM), the group behind concepts such as Sabio by the Sea and L’Entrecot, stands where popular watering hole Sabio used to be. Where the tapas bar was dark and sexy, this Parisian-style bistro is all coy, pretty lightness. Gone are the tiled walls and the dark wood bar counter that dominated the room, instead, there are whitewashed walls with copper and turquoise flourishes, illustrations of a sassy “Souffle Girl” by Singaporean artist Grace Ciao, and chic round-topped bistro tables comfortably spaced apart. They also re-outfitted the kitchen entirely, with the key piece being a state-of-the-art industrial oven (rather than reveal price of the oven, the restaurant would just like to describe it as “an expensive piece of professional kitchen equipment”) that cooks the souffles at a higher, and super consistent temperature. This machinery is the reason why the soufflé-focused concept can be turned to reality: it cuts the cooking time of savoury souffles from the usual 30 to 40 minutes to around 15 minutes, just like its sweet counterpart. So you won’t be twiddling your thumbs forever waiting for your order to come.

Olivier Bendel, the Parisian owner of DHM, is the main man behind the recipes for this concept. He enthuses about the versatility of souffles — while the current menu has six savoury and eight sweet varieties, he already has a war chest of about 60 recipes and plans to update the menu constantly.

But frankly, it takes guts to open such a concept. While it tastes the same even after sitting out for a while, the dish’s draw lies in its magnificent rise when it is fresh out of the oven. The service crew and kitchen have to work in perfect tandem to ensure that every freshly-baked souffle is dispatched in no time — or it will arrive at the table sad and deflated.

On the quiet weekday we visited, we observed tall, proud and wobbly souffles served to the tables around us — drawing excited exclamations from the diners. Hopefully it will be the same when the place becomes packed. Olivier is conservative when it comes to projections, saying that he hopes to do about 60 to 80 covers per day at this 48-seater. “I have been opening restaurants in Singapore for a decade now, but you never know how response will be before opening the doors,” says Olivier. “This is definitely a concept that is easy to replicate and scale, but we aren’t thinking about that now — let’s just do this right, first.”

While sweet souffles are crated from crème patissier (made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs and milk) and stiffly whisked egg whites, béchamel sauce (a French white sauce made from milk and butter, thickened with flour) form the base for savoury souffles. Egg yolks and stiffly beaten egg whites are then incorporated. Ramekins are used and Olivier’s recipe calls for the insides of the ramekins to be buttered and coated with sugar for the sweet versions, and breadcrumb or parmesan for the savoury ones — this helps the mixture to “climb” up the sides of the ramekin during the baking process.

In the Frenchman’s opinion: “It should be very, very airy, and moist. You don’t find a lot of savoury souffles outside of France and the biggest mistake most people make is to overcook it. The inside needs to be almost undercooked, it shouldn’t set in the middle but needs to be creamy. In terms of rise, a sweet soufflé should rise straight like a cylinder, and be consistent in colour. A savoury soufflé could rise in many ways and could sometimes resemble a cauliflower, the colour is not uniform either — it is a different kind of beauty.”

No premixes are used here. The proud Frenchman insists that everything is made from scratch using only fresh ingredients. This applies too to all other items on the menu. Souffle shares a similar spread of starters with sister eatery, L’Entrecot steakhouse, with classic French items like onion soup, duck terrine and escargots. And just in case you don’t feel like having souffles for both your main course and dessert, there's also a selection of five hearty casserole dishes and five side dishes on the menu.

This would be familiar for regulars of L’Entrecot: wobbly, melt-in-your-mouth rich beef marrow simply seasoned with cracked pepper and sea salt. Scooped the good stuff straight from the bone and spread onto crusty bread. It beats butter any day — but it's also far more expensive than better.

A small cocotte good for two to share — or just one very hungry person — this is made with beef cheeks cooked with red wine and a mix of vegetables including pearl onions and carrots for about four hours in the oven. The super unctuous beef cheek tastes like love at first bite, though we found the garnish of somewhat chewy sautéed bacon a bit distracting.

Made from a hard cow’s milk cheese known for its fruity flavours, this is probably the most accessible option for those who cannot get used to the idea of savoury souffles. The fruity, nutty flavours of comte comes through very distinctly thanks to the generous incorporation of the grated cheese in the batter. Meanwhile, the mouthfeel is light and creamy, though not as finely textured as we would have liked it. The puffiness of this was not as dramatic as the “cauliflower heads” that Olivier described to us, but it kept its form for quite a few minutes and frankly, tasted the same even after it became deflated.

Served with a portion of lobster bisque on the side and a piece of lobster claw meat on top, this is an easy crowd-pleaser. The soufflé itself is very subtly flavoured with lobster bisque, but you'll need to drench it with the bisque for the full effect. And please don’t wait for the waiter to pour it for you — while the bistro offers table service, it is not so atas that the server would go through the whole show of cutting a well in the middle of the soufflé and drizzling the bisque over. The robust bisque, which we would have been happy to sip on its own, comes with little chunks of lobster meat that adds a tender bite to the creamy soufflé. Yummy.

This is the French menu’s nod to Singaporean food heritage. The soufflé is baked on a base of chopped prawns, topped with a duo of shelled prawns, and served with a small pot of laksa gravy on the side. The soufflé base manages to hold its own rather than disintegrate even with the laksa gravy poured on it and mixed in. As for the mildly spicy gravy, while it was umami-packed, it wasn’t as lemak as it should be, though the creaminess of the rich béchamel base, incorporated with just a kiss of laksa flavour compensated for that a little. Some chopped laksa leaves would've elevated the dish, too. Not bad, but a little too nuanced compared to the real deal.

A dessert soufflé. This is one impressive tower of power. Rising almost 10cm above the rim of the ramekin when it first arrived, this might be one of the tallest, wobbliest soufflé we’ve ever seen. And just in case that doesn’t impress you, it's served with a bottle of Grand Marnier orange liqueur handed to you, for you to pour as much over your soufflé as you wish. Frankly, we wouldn’t overdo it because that would just drown the divine deliciousness of this fine-textured confection, so creamy and subtly perfumed with candied orange pieces that add a pop of sweetness to this none-too-sugary dessert. But if you are still thinking about the booze, there is also the option of having an additional shot of Grand Marnier on the side, for SGD12. Other sweet baked options include the ubiquitous chocolate, raspberry with vanilla ice cream, salted caramel with salted caramel ice cream, speculoos and chartreuse (the heady French liqueur made with over 100 botanicals).

Called an “iced soufflé”, this chilled dessert is essentially a ramekin of frozen whipped egg whites, made to look like a soufflé. This is coated with bits of feuilletine (thin, sweetened crêpe pieces) and flavoured with lime. While we enjoyed the zesty flavours, it is quite a dense dessert and we couldn’t manage more than a heaped tablespoonful of it.

The savoury souffles here are certainly well made, but two days after our meal, it is that Grand Marnier soufflé that we are still dreaming of. It is honestly one of the best we’ve ever had on this island, where souffles are more often than not overcooked to a texture resembling Japanese steamed cheesecake, or undercooked and mushy. The launch of this restaurant also means that now you can enjoy a well-made soufflé outside of the usual atas fine-dining establishments, and that is huge yay.

Souffle is at 5 Duxton Hill. S089591, Tel: 6690-7562. Open daily Mon to Sat noon – 3pm (lunch) & 6pm – 10.30pm (dinner); Sun 11am – 10pm. Last orders 10pm. www.dhm.com.sg/souffle

Photos: Ealbert Ho