Before entering Somma, a host will nudge you towards a set of doors. This isn’t reflective of lax service standards. It’s a ploy.

As you open these doors, a huddle of chefs greet you with a fervent ‘hello’ before you’re ushered to not one, but two kitchen islands, where snacks are served: pumpkin broth in their shells, dotted with olive oil pressed by the chef’s uncle; purple shrimp tartlet in a sauce made from their heads, crowned with a hibiscus flower. By the island is a frosted wall of glass projecting ghostly shapes of what resembles scientists tending to an autopsy. At 7:30, servers emerge with candles in hand, disbursing these to tables, moving in a pack as they would in the Handmaid’s Tale.

Nothing else suggests that a meal here unfolds like the plot of ’The Menu,’ nor any dystopian film. The Somma experience, happily, choreographs the midpoint between dinner and dark theater. It’s an expression of ‘harvest’— this season’s theme — and, or sum of (per the restaurant’s name), the chef Mirko Febbrile’s wild imagination, which he draws from his Puglian upbringing, global travels and the decade spent honing his craft in Singapore.

Knowing the standards set by the top-rung New Bahru locale, the regional Italian compass is neither fussy nor frumpy. The ingredients do please, and the uni ‘special,’ like many of the dishes, is both novel and inspired. Febbrile told us that he grew up scavenging for sea urchin off the (Italian) coast, and the one served here is a Murasaki breed, laid on almond custard; above it is a confit of Amalfi lemon, reduced to a bright molasses.

It’s an ‘I want seconds’ type of dish only until the other dishes arrive because they are compelling, too: an unnervingly shaped pigs snout, braised till gelatinous, then grilled; lamb skewers with pinenut and chestnut pesto under silky handkerchiefs of wild boar lardo; the reduction made from a prodigious amount of carrots (20:1) to fortify the lobster sauce, so it’s dizzyingly sweet; the pitch-perfect pigeon a broth gently coaxed from bay leaves; a tortellini in brodo, bookending a meal that started with one.

Expectations were high for Somma. It’s nice to see them exceeded. Less