Meatsmith
A 12th birthday barbecue blowout (Feb 7 only)
Meatsmith turns 12 on Saturday, Feb 7, 2026, and the Telok Ayer smokehouse is celebrating with a special collaboration led by Australia’s most-awarded pitmaster Adam Roberts, alongside the Meatsmith team. Chef Dave Pynt of Burnt Ends will also be on-site on the day, cooking a special menu item — a cameo that adds extra firepower to an already smoke-forward party.
The anniversary menu is a curated greatest-hits spread, balancing playful bar bites with bigger, shareable plates.Start with the tempura beer-batter oysters finished with Kewpie and kimchi dust, then go straight into the dirty rice-stuffed fried chicken wing with Creole sauce. Roberts personally describes the boudin balls as a “classic arancini with a low n slow barbecue twist”, made with smoked pork and rice, fried crisp and served with pickles and remoulade.
For smokehouse royalty, there’s a chopped beef brisket slider with whisky sour slaw — designed as a no-fuss handheld bite that still carries the peppery, deeply seasoned character of American brisket. If you like your meat straight off the flames, the spicy wagyu beef skewer comes with Alabama white sauce and chives; Roberts describes it as his personal “go-to satay”, dry-marinated overnight and grilled to order.
Cocktails are priced at $15, spanning classics like a whisky sour and Manhattan, plus a smoked old fashioned built on smoked butter whisky and popcorn syrup.
Gelato Messina The Scoop launches with Janice Wong (from Jan 26)
See also: New horizons
Gelato Messina is formalising its love of creative play with The Scoop, a new chef collaboration series that invites chefs the team admire to reinterpret signature ideas through a “gelato-first” lens. Launching the series is pastry chef and chocolatier Janice Wong, setting the tone for what Messina calls an ongoing conversation rooted in friendship, curiosity and desserts designed for sharing.
The debut drops in two limited-edition formats. First is a special gelato flavour inspired by Wong’s signature dessert, Snickers, reimagined as You’re Not You When You’re Gelato’d (from $7.50): peanut butter gelato layered with salted roasted peanuts, caramel and chocolate fudge.
See also: Celebrating grandfather recipes at Gilmore & Damian D’Silva
Also launching is a bon bon box ($15) featuring two crowd-favourite gelatos — Kopi Gao and Macadamia Crunch — positioned as a compact tasting experience that spotlights texture, detail and balance. Both the gelato and bon bon are available in limited quantities from 26 January onwards.
Somma Folklore, a winter menu built around fire and ritual (until Mar 26)
At Somma in New Bahru, chef-partner Mirko Febbrile is channelling his Puglian roots into Folklore, a seasonal menu running from now till Mar 26 that draws on winter festivals — bonfires, processions and shared celebrations — and translates them into a tasting narrative. Febbrile has described Somma’s idea of luxury as being “genuinely well cared for” and discovering something new for the first time — an ethos that fits Folklore’s mix of comfort and surprise.
The opening “welcome act” is Potatoes, served as a hot broth poured into a carved potato shaped into a beeswax cup — a nod to Puglia’s tradition of cooking potatoes over fire or burying them in embers, finished with peppery Coratina olive oil. Another early bite riffs on festive gathering: a charcoal-and-beer shell inspired by pie tee, filled with slow-cooked Montoro onion, Parmigiano Vacche Rosse, lentils shoyu fermented in Somma Lab, and cotechino — then topped with an onion and white-pepper marshmallow roasted tableside with charcoal.
A key “surprise course” introduces Somma’s Puglian staples through grano arso (burnt wheat) sourdough and pink radicchio over charcoal, designed to be eaten scarpetta-style — break bread, mop up flavour, repeat. The menu’s heartier moments include a mountain milk-fed lamb cooked patiently over fire, served with truffle-rich jus and a bright, wintery pumpkin ceviche finished with blood orange leche de tigre — and you’re invited to eat it with your hands, like you would around a fireplace.
