FURA is a gastronomic exploration of the future of food and drink

You don’t expect a bar to challenge the frontiers of gastronomy, but edgy and future-forward FURA is here to change your mind.

Sustainable dining. Planet-friendly gastronomy. Plant-forward cuisine. Ethical sourcing.

When it comes to conscious eating, we’ve heard them all before. Yet too many restaurants whom claim such lofty culinary ideals pay mere lip service. But here’s one establishment that do a lot more, and may just give us a glimpse of the future of food.

Plot twist: FURA is a cocktail-focused gastrobar.

FURA is really version 2.0 of Mallow, a successful nine-month pop-up dining concept where founders Christina Rasmussen and Sasha Wijidessa first introduced their take on sustainable gastronomy and mixology. They made that plant-based concept permanent as FURA when they moved into their own venue on Amoy Street earlier this year in September, right above contemporary Sichuan restaurant KUN.

Here power couple Rasmussen and Wijidessa continue their sustainable approach with its first conceptual menu, ‘Journal of Future Food’.

The future of food, according to the book of Rasmussen and Wijdessa, is a total, end-to-end, approach. It’s about reevaluating the entire food value chain, from careful, ethical sourcing and maximising the use of each ingredient, all the way to making sure diners walk away with a healthier appreciation of how they can make better, more informed choices.

It’s why FURA showcases more innovative planet-friendly ingredients such as cell-cultured milk or coffee rendered from burdock root and hemp seeds, but also adopts hyperlocal sourcing from local producers such as hydroponic farmers GreenLoop Farms.

Think dishes like Peas in Threes, a melange of pea shoots and creamy tofu dressing and nut dukkah for crunch, or Easy Cabbage, where roasted red cabbage is smeared with Middle Eastern inspired miso-tahini and a salsa rendered from carrot tops.

I particularly enjoyed Kurly Kale, which sees Rasmussen serve up hydroponically-grown kale with edamame, pickled shallots, and an unctuous toasted seed butter, as well as Modo and Pesto, which makes a return from its Mallow days. This is simply sourdough bread with a dip made with pumpkin seeds, capsicum, and shio koji. But it’s a delight to eat.

Cocktails follow a similar vein. Widjessa leans on natural ferments for many of her drinks, and employs vegetable and fruit discards as much as possible. Make Local Tomatoes Great Again is a lightly fizzy tequila-based tipple that makes the most out of local tomatoes using lacto-fermentation, for example, while New Yuck City is a fun take on the New York Sour that’s altogether funky and umami with the use of shio kombu in addition to various fruit.

And if you really love your martinis dirty, Jellyfish Martini will excite you as well as mess with your mind with the use of fish leaf, spirulina, kombu oil, and yes, jellyfish.

Fermentation and pickling are certainly powerful tools in FURA’s arsenal. They’ve experimented using insects in their dishes (and maybe cocktails) as well, which you’ll see on the menu once the authorities approve their use.

‘We believe that future food should make sense for where our world is heading,” Wijdessa tells us. “Our goal is to highlight ingredients and make them work in purposeful and delicious ways while reducing ecological imbalances. It’s about shaping the future of food through conscious choices in our everyday decisions.”

Not everyone will believe in FURA’s vision of the future. But if Wijdessa and Rasmussen have their way? One day they will.