Witty, modernist and a whole lot of fun – Jeff Ramsey’s Babe
Up on the eleventh floor of Work @ Clearwater in Damansara Heights, stretching out from a sleek wooden pool deck and beyond to Kuala Lumpur’s twinkling skyline, is Jeff Ramsey’s very own playground. It’s a place where culinary magic of mad scientist-esque proportions attempts to stretch the imagination, whilst never falling short on pinpoint-precise plating and execution – as should be expected from a chef with one Michelin star already under his belt (Ramsay earned his at the Tapas Molecular Bar in 2008, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Tokyo).
Those who venture into Babe are in for quite an adventure. Opt for the Chiku menu (RM 200++), and you’ll find yourself taking in the ancient, heady scent of a sliver of yellowtail nigiri smoked with incense made from a thousand-year-old cypress tree, then being charmingly disarmed by modern, izakaya-inspired dishes such as liquid croquettes made of pumpkin, chopped squid, and konnyaku, or warm ikura gohan rice with konbu butter and salmon roe.
Certain whirlwind courses will get your head spinning in the best way possible: Babe’s virtual truffle steak comes with a truffle-perfumed tissue, to be sniffed repeatedly (an ingenious way of incorporating its distinctive flavour), while the Godzilla’s Rage dessert allows diners to toy with meringues in liquid nitrogen – trickier and riskier than first expected – and exhale thick, curling white clouds of smoke.
For all of Ramsey’s serious commitment to modernist cuisine, with his experimental cooking methods, painstakingly sourced ingredients (he grows rare micro-greens on a rooftop garden), and frequent nods to his Japanese-American heritage, the result is pure, distilled, and irrepressibly delightful fun. It’s time to shed your inhibitions and come out to play at Babe.
