When you're in a new country, it's easiest to let a local guide you on where to eat.
This is especially true for Singapore if you have a limited time here. With an abundance of restaurants, it's not always clear which ones are exceptional.
Binomio has been around for a few years and it's still on a lot of people's "highly recommended" list of places to dine.
A friend suggested it for our Friday night dinner, and I thought what a cute idea, to graze on Spanish tapas and sip on wine before a night out.
Binomio's reputation for good food was evident in their numerous online reviews.
That night, we indulged in authentic Spanish food in Singapore.
Tapas - small Spanish savoury dishes, typically served with drinks at a bar.
Oxford Languages
Binomio Restaurante is a Spanish tapas bar and restaurant located on Craig Road.
You enter and walk past the tapas bar, buzzing with patrons enjoying their nibbles and wine.
The restaurant opens up to a dining room that is modern and clean.
They have two menus, a menu for the cosy tapas bar at the front, and one for patrons dining in plush, velvet chairs and crisp, white tablecloths. The also offer private dining for larger parties.
The wine list is extensive, although a couple are available in carafes. We ordered a carafe of red and white.
The hosts were attentive, taking their time to walk us (well, me) through the menu.
The tapas tasting menu are set at 5 for 139 Sgd and 7 for 188 Sgd, with the exception of a few premium dishes.
For the 5 of us, we decided to share a couple of nibbles and 5 tapas to start with.
One of our dining companions doesn't eat ham, so we ordered the mushroom croquettes as well.
Both croquettes were crispy on the outside and had a pillowy soft, creamy centre. The mushroom croquette had more umami flavour, as expected. Creamy aioli accompanied the croquettes.
The tiger prawns confit in olive oil and garlic is the perfect dish to eat with bread to sop up all the excess garlic-infused oil.
Juicy prawns atop crunchy crouton drizzled with fragrant garlic oil is an experience to be had with bare hands had I not committed to after-dinner plans. Trust me, this dish was delectable.
Is there anything better than squid fritto with a glass of wine?
This is the quintessential tapas dish, perfect for sharing and goes down well with a chilled white wine. The table demolished these in a heartbeat and honestly, they're better than fries as far as 'crunchy foods with alcohol' is concerned.
This was an odd choice as a tapas selection because it's not a great sharing dish.
To serve this, I cut up the asparagus and mixed it so that the vegetables were all coated with the velvety potato puree. Asparagus and brussel sprouts were still lush green and sweet.
It was a really tasty dish and the perfect example of letting the ingredients shine; add a poached egg on top of that and I would've happily devoured this one for brunch.
For a vegetarian option, this was superb in every way.
This place loves its potato puree; and for the meatballs it was no exception, to be fair we didn't mind at all.
The meatballs were soft, had been cooked in a rich tomato sauce and were served over a potato puree with the consistency of béchamel sauce.
A comfort dish that makes you want to rip off crusty bread, soak up all the sauce and eat it like it's your last meal.
Again, I feel like this dish as a tapas was missing the mark a little.
When you're sharing this, you lose so many elements that were intended to be enjoyed together.
I don't remember the pork belly, that was all devoured before I got to it.
What I did love about the dish was the juicy, tender chicken breast, expertly grilled and that glossy, rich sauce. It reminded me of a classier Sunday roast with gravy.
I would've ordered this one as my main, to eat by myself and washed down with a glass of Sauv Blanc.
The girls, myself included, were satisfied and full after the croquettes and tapas.
The boys are Asian; no meal is complete without rice. We have nicknamed one of them 'fan tung', which means rice bucket in Cantonese.
For this reason, we ordered the classical chicken and seafood paella for three people.
The dish was served in the pan that it's cooked in, topped with clams and shrimps, a drizzle of picada, and a green sauce made with olive oil, chives, parsley and garlic.
The rice had been cooking and soaking up the saffron-infused stock and sofrito. The paella had developed a nice crust, socarrat, at the bottom of the pan that not even I could resist.
If we hadn't ordered the paella, we could've gotten desserts but we regret nothing.
The dessert menu features tempting Spanish-style desserts or the usual suspects, cheesecake and tarts with Spanish flair.
My picks would've been the Tarta de Whisky, vanilla tart with glazed egg yolk and whisky ice cream and something traditional like the Churros with Chocolate Sauce to complete the experience.
Binomio changes their menu a few times a year to keep it interesting. They are open Monday to Friday for lunch and dinner and Saturday for dinner only.