With a sanger in Singapore, Dave Pynt flies Australian flag in world’s best restaurants

Singapore: When diners run their eyes over the menu at Burnt Ends, Dave Pynt’s acclaimed modern barbecue restaurant in Singapore, there is often head scratching over one of the signature offerings.

The Burnt Ends Sanger draws questions about the Australian vernacular, but uncertainty tends to go out the window once diners have tasted the pulled pork favourite.

Dave Pynt, the chef and owner of Singapore restaurant Burnt Ends, where online bookings are made 45 days ahead.

“It definitely [prompts] a fair bit of confusion and warrants that sort of explanation so that people understand it’s Australian slang for a sandwich. It’s just a part of creating that identity of who we are,” said Pynt, the 39-year-old Perth-born chef and owner.

“The reason it actually came about is we were doing a pop-up in east London in 2012 and there were crazy burger wars going on. Everyone was competing to be the best burger. I was like, ‘I don’t want to be a part of this’, but we kind of needed that sort of format, a sandwich, burger-style offering. So I was just like, ‘You know what, I’ll call it a f---ing sanger’, and it’ll just remove us completely from being compared or judged in that sort of realm. From that point, it’s really just stuck.”

So too has Michelin-starred Burnt Ends in the decade since it opened in a city famous for its food.

Its enduring popularity is such that bookings remain elusive in the regional finance hub, and it has been a fixture on lists of the best restaurants on the planet and rated in Asia’s top five.

Burnt Ends signature sanger, a pulled pork favourite.

This week there was further recognition as Pynt was effectively left flying the flag for Australia in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

Australian venues were overlooked completely, paying the price in some respects for the travel and costs associated with judges of the British-based awards reaching Australia.

While they were snubbed, Burnt Ends was placed 65th.

It was but the latest nod for Pynt, whose barbecue staple has been as high as 35th on the list and who has built his restaurant’s reputation with an unpretentious attitude to food and casual setting, as well as its wood-fired cooking and Burnt Ends “classics” like smoked quails egg and caviar, and beef marmalade and house pickles.

Burnt Ends moved from Singapore’s Chinatown to Dempsey Hill, west of the city centre, last year.

“I’m super proud of the team and proud of being, I suppose, the de facto Australian representative in the list,” Pynt said.

“But I’m a little bit sad that there are so many amazing restaurants in Australia that are not there.”

Pynt, who lives in Singapore with British wife Katrina and their seven-year-old daughter Posy and six-year-old son Phoenix, has witnessed a transformation of his adopted city’s culinary scene into a mega-industry in the 10 years since he set up shop.

Renowned for its network of hawker centre street food outlets and coffee shops, the city-state once featured a smattering of fine-dining destinations in and around exclusive Marina Bay. But there are now seemingly endless options in a place brimming with wealth, from super high-end sushi to three restaurants with three Michelin stars.

Having relocated last year from Singapore’s Chinatown district to a new space in leafy, upmarket Dempsey Hill, Pynt and his business partners also have big ambitions beyond South-East Asia.

They have another restaurant called The Ledge, which operates inside the Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives, and are eyeing an expansion of Burnt Ends by opening in London’s Harrods at the end of next year.

Singapore is where Pynt made his name, but he hopes Burnt Ends will enjoy similar success in the city where the restaurant’s eponymous sanger was born.

“We are just a barbecue restaurant but being in Singapore and coming from that Australian background, you can draw from all over the world, from our travel ... we can pick all the things that we love and twist it into a Burnt Ends dish,” he said.

“Essentially, what we’re looking for with all of our dishes is for you not to think about whether you like it or not. We just want to you to be happy. We just want you to be eating it and enjoying.”

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.