French Bistro on Armenian Street: Le Bistrot du Sommelier

Le Bistrot du Sommelier cooks what the French call bourgeois cuisine: rabbit braised in mustard and white wine cream, a half chicken roasted with forty cloves of garlic, and Burgundy snails baked in garlic butter. The bistro sits at 53 Armenian Street, Singapore 179940, in a shophouse with its main dining room on Level 1, and it describes itself as French bourgeois cuisine from an awarded sommelier's cellar. If you typed french bistro near me while standing outside the Peranakan Museum, this is a few steps away.

The restaurant faces Armenian Street, a short, quiet lane that runs between Stamford Road and Bras Basah. Its own website says the nearest MRT is equally far from Bras Basah on the Circle Line and City Hall on the East West and North South lines, about 450 metres in either case. Both exits put you on foot for a pleasant stretch, through the Bras Basah and Stamford Road area.

The main bistro dining room is on Level 1. Drivers can use the public car park beside the Peranakan Museum, entered from Loke Yew Street, a detail the restaurant itself gives on its site.

Lunch runs from 12:00pm to 2:30pm and dinner from 6:00pm to 10:30pm, Monday to Saturday. The kitchen is dark on Sunday. Between the two services the Rillette Bar keeps going from 12:00pm until 11:00pm, which makes it the practical choice at 4pm when every other kitchen on the street has gone quiet. A glass of wine and a pot of rillettes is a respectable late afternoon here.

The restaurant names its sommelier on the site, Max Fedkiw, and that explains the personality of the place. The wine list is the point. The house also states plainly that it does not encourage guests to bring their own bottles, because every wine on the list is chosen by its sommeliers. Plan your evening around what they pour rather than what you carry in.

Start with the Escargots at S$20, Burgundy snails baked in tomato fondue and garlic butter. They arrive hot enough to need patience. The Tartiflette at S$36 is the Alpine answer to a cold evening, oven-baked Reblochon over potatoes, bacon and onion, and it is easily big enough for two people to share before a main. Frogs' legs, sautéed, cost S$38 and are the most traditional starter on a list that does not apologise for tradition.

For mains, the Lapin à la Moutarde at S$42 is the dish most readers will not find anywhere else nearby, braised rabbit in a mustard and white wine cream sauce. The half Poulet Rôti at S$42 is the oven-roasted French chicken with forty garlic cloves, soft and sweet rather than sharp. Le Confit, a crispy duck leg with rhubarb sauce, and the oven-roasted Canadian pork chop with cep mushrooms and Madère cream are both S$42 as well.

The kitchen leans French but it does not stop at the border of Provence. The seafood squid ink pasta with scallops, prawns and mussels is S$40, and the half Boston lobster with bisque and spaghetti is S$62, which is the most expensive pasta on the page and the one that tends to land in the middle of a celebratory table. The Agneau, a 300 gram oven-roasted lamb rack, is S$60.

There is also a burger, listed as LBDS le Hamburger, an Angus beef patty finished with foie gras for S$48. It is the only dish here you can eat with your hands, and it is a fair choice for a table that includes someone who does not want a three-course dinner. Sides are S$12 each. The menu states that prices are subject to GST and prevailing government taxes.

Armenian Street is not a queue-for-two-hours kind of address. Arriving at 6:00pm, when dinner service begins, is the easiest way to get the table you want. Later evenings on Friday and Saturday are the natural time for a booking.

The restaurant takes group bookings for events and asks for a 50 percent deposit to confirm them, a rule listed on its events page. For an ordinary dinner for two, a call or WhatsApp to the number above is the simplest route. Sunday is the day to plan around because the doors stay shut.

After dinner, the Peranakan Museum next door is the obvious neighbour, a former school building from the early twentieth century that sits right beside the car park the restaurant mentions. Stamford Road leads on to the National Museum of Singapore, whose lawn is a decent place to let a heavy rabbit dinner settle. The walk back towards City Hall passes St Andrew's Cathedral and the colonial buildings around the Padang.

Bras Basah Complex, with its second-hand bookshops, is a short walk the other way and worth the detour on a Saturday afternoon before an early dinner. Both routes are flat, shaded in places and easy in evening heat, which suits a meal that arrives with French portions.

Plenty of Singapore restaurants borrow the word bistro for a menu that is really modern European. Le Bistrot du Sommelier describes its own food as French bourgeois cuisine, and the plates back it up: rabbit, duck confit, snails, tartiflette, forty garlic cloves. It suits anyone asking where to eat French food that reads like home cooking rather than a tasting menu.

The restaurant's own page title places it in City Hall, Singapore, and that is the right frame of mind. It is a civic district bistro with a serious cellar, a late-afternoon bar and a Monday to Saturday rhythm. Ask Karpo in the Karpo APP for a table-for-two plan around City Hall and it can slot this bistro in beside a museum visit and a stroll along Stamford Road.