I was telling a friend yesterday how I’m getting tired of eating average food in the city. Highly acclaimed restaurants with prices that can give my mother a heart attack, alas serving food that is unremarkable. It’s never bad. You don’t walk out saying that was a terrible meal. Yet, it’s rarely great. You don’t reach for your phone, dying to tell your friends about this amazing place you ate at. And you always come back home feeling just a little bit cheated.

After many months of average meals in Singapore, today I had an exceptional one. I didn’t see this one coming – GU:UM, a contemporary Korean restaurant in the bustling Keong Saik lane, from the stables of Chef Louis Han who is the man behind 1 Michelin-star Korean restaurant Naeum. GU:UM is his attempt to make elevated Korean cuisine more approachable, a trend in fine dining that’s been picking up momentum for a year or two. Chef Han has hit it out of the park this time, and I no longer have to sell a kidney to eat incredible Korean food at Meta or Naeum.

GU:UM means to grill, roast, or bake in Korean. Another trend in Singapore – wood-fired cooking, seems to be the marketing pitch here. It shouldn’t be, in my opinion. There is definitely a smokey angle to some of the dishes (that smoky vanilla ice-cream…yes, please) but too many restaurants off-late have been getting on the wood-fired meats bandwagon. GU:UM has so much going for it that it would bode it well to forge another path.

Contemporary interiors as befitting Korean dining sensibilities envelop you as you enter. A long bar and counter seating along the fire grill takes up one side of the restaurant while (a little too) closely spaced tables line up the other side. The staff is incredibly hospitable and in sync, from the usher to your server and the staff on the pass. Though mine was a table for one, I was well taken care of throughout the meal, without intrusive and repetitive interruptions asking how the meal is, which some restaurants mistake for attention to the customer.

There is an a la carte menu available, great news for business diners who rather not wait for course after course when they’re meeting a client or a colleague. I, however, had the leisure of time, and thus went for the three-course weekday set lunch menu. An incredible array of dishes followed, each course reinforcing my opinion of the food here.

For starters, a very unimaginatively named Square Salad blew my socks off from the word go. A tangy dressing drenching watermelon, cucumber and boiled eggs, the balance in the dish was incredible. It was followed by another appetiser, K-Terrine, a pork terrine served with three condiments. The condiments are the star here, all made in-house and each better than the other. Showcasing fermentation techniques like only Korean cuisine can, the condiments uplifted the plain terrine, and were so good that I even added them on top of the Honey Butter Corn crisp which was boring by itself. If I could bottle those condiments up and take them home, I would!

Small details add to the authenticity of the restaurant. In Seoul, I once called a server over to my table, asking for cutlery in sign language as English is not spoken widely there. He looked confused for a moment, and then opened a hidden drawer under my table, where, lo and behold, lay all the chopsticks, forks, knives and spoons that I could want. When I found a similar hidden drawer under my table at GU:UM, should I want cutlery beyond the chopsticks provided, it made me smile with nostalgia.

Coming back to the food, for mains, I chose the Kurobuta Collar as the cuisine lends itself best to pork when it comes to meats. This is when the magic started. The platter of pork slices with a side salad would probably have been good enough for me, but in true Korean style, the server kept bringing condiment after condiment, until my table could hold no more. Five sauces and condiments to accompany the pork, lettuce leaves to wrap it all up in, and a mini bibimbap-type bowl with rice and vegetables served with their addictive XO Sauce. If that wasn’t enough, there was also a hearty beef broth that was served alongside, for when you wanted to wash all this down.

The flavours were spot on. When I visited Korea, one of my gripes was that all too often, the flavours in the dishes were linear. There was sourness and chilli predominantly. Here, however, the food offered a wide variety of flavours, allowing you to customise each bite with the condiments provided, as per your taste. One of the better meals I have had this year.

At $68 for the weekday lunch, this is by no means a cheap meal. But the food is as good as what is served in the higher-rated Korean fine dining restaurants in town, where you’d shell out more than $200 per person. With that in mind, GU:UM offers great value.

Rating: 8/10