d’Arenberg Cube opens new restaurant, Singapore Circus
Gone are the 3D printers and expensive degustation. d’Arenberg’s prized Cube in McLaren Vale is launching a whole new restaurant – and it’s set to be a circus.
Food & Wine
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d’Arenberg is re-rolling the dice at its prized Cube cellar door, with a new dining concept to replace the famed high-end Cube Restaurant.
The McLaren Vale winery is launching Singapore Circus, a South East Asian restaurant that will occupy level 3 of the $15m building. Gone are the 3D printers and costly fine dining degustation – a feed-me menu in the more “approachable” space will cost $80, while smaller a la carte plates start at $12.
“The Cube Restaurant was a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’; we want this to be ‘once-a-month’,” says d’Arenberg’s brand manager, Christian Burvill-Holmes.
d’Arenberg Cube Restaurant closed in March 2020, with owners blaming Covid and declining tourism after the December 2019 bushfires.
Singapore Circus will fit the eclectic feel of the Cube – and its visionary, fourth-generation winemaker Chester Osborn – with food inspired by head chef Jamie Steele’s work in South East Asia.
“Singapore has always been that kind of melting pot; a joining place, a junction or a circus for everyone to meet and experience new flavours in a fun, vibrant and exciting place, which I think ties into everything the Cube is,” Steele says.
“(The Cube) is a tourism icon – there are so many people visiting – so we wanted to make it accessible for everyone to come through and have a meal.
“I could eat out with my family for lunch and still have money on the way home.”
Menu highlights include chilli crab, Balinese duck cooked in a purpose-built oven, laksa and chicken rice.
It’s a world apart from the eel and fois gras “cookies”, phytoplankton scrolls and Italian meringue etched out by a 3D printer that gained the original Cube Restaurant national recognition, and a rare 9/10 review from The Advertiser’s Simon Wilkinson, in 2018.
The “extra long menu” at that time cost $190, not including wine pairings.
The restaurant also appeared on TV screens nationally, in season 10 of MasterChef Australia.
At the time of its closure, Osborn said the Cube Restaurant “wasn’t a money making exercise”.
“We were full a lot of the time; we weren’t full all the time,” he said.
Since then, Level 3 has been offering casual cafe-style fare created by the kitchen team at d’Arry’s Verandah Restaurant, also on d’Arenberg grounds.
Singapore Circus is now open for “preview sittings” ahead of its official launch on October 3.
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