You have to wonder what went on during the F&B planning sessions for the Amara Sanctuary Resort’s Silk Road of the Sea. First, it turns out the restaurant is not on the hotel grounds at all. And when you ask the hotel staff, they tell you that you have to walk there and then they wave their hands vaguely in the direction of the sea. 

So. To get to your table, you have to walk away from the lobby out into the open, through a car park, down an unevenly sloped concrete path, past a bird enclosure and then stand in the public plaza looking around aimlessly. You then walk into a gift shop and, like Marco Polo, ask for directions to Silk Road. And when you finally get to the front door itself, it occurs to you that, save for a placard by the path, there’s no signage anywhere on the building. Now imagine all this taking place at night, and in the middle of a rainstorm. 

Inside, a chef lounges at one of the tables. (On three visits, there were only two occupied tables in the entire restaurant.) To his credit, he hustles back to the kitchen. Meanwhile, the place is, for a restaurant of this pedigree, unusually bare. It looks nothing like its sexy sister restaurant at the Amara in Tanjong Pagar. There, you have laser-etched poetry on the fl oor and comfy seats. Here, it’s all bare concrete fl oors, bare walls and harsh lighting. 

And for an Amara outlet and all the hype (always a double-edged sword), the kitchen fails to step it up. Standards such as rolled slices of pork topped with tongue-singeing chilli and garlic are done competently enough. The wasabi prawns, coated with shredded potato so they resemble Cousin Itt from The Addams Family, is a clever interpretation of a perennial favourite, and the deep-fried eggplant fritters shrouded with pork floss were addictive. And clearly, much effort went into creating the herbal soups of the day, though even here, the presentation fell short – our orders were served with soup slopped all over the edges. 

And then there are basic slip-ups, like overcooked greens at all three meals. The crispy skinned chicken was a little too moist, and not a patch on Chef Chan’s version. The salt-and-pepper squid was bland, and the char kway teow a little stodgy. The skin on the xiaolong bao was too thick and dry, and there was barely any meat filling, while all the soup had leaked out of a hole through the bottom of a dumpling at one meal, and tasted sourish at another. 

Even the Shenyang pan-fried dumpling – always a treat at the Tanjong Pagar outlet – was inconsistent. At the first lunch, it looked shrivelled; at the third, it was pleasantly plump, though served at a tepid temperature. The last straw came when a complimentary plate of unripe fruits arrived at the table. 

Actually, the last straw comes when you realise that to get home after dinner, you have two choices: slog uphill back to the hotel, or walk through a deserted beachfront to the nearest taxi stand at the monorail station. 

More information on Silk Road of the Sea.