[Review] Numb Restaurant at Marina One – New Sichuanese Specialty Restaurant in Singapore to get your Mala Fix

Numb restaurant is a Chinese restaurant located in Marina One, Singapore that specialises in tongue-numbing Sichuanese cuisine. The founders of the restaurant, Stella Wang and Ma Jie, are ex-bankers who quit their finance careers to pursue their love for food. Numb is their third restaurant, after successfully launching Chengdu Restaurant and Chengdu Bowl in Singapore.

The restaurant’s focus is on the numbing spice of Sichuanese cuisine, but it has been reinterpreted with contemporary techniques to cater to the changing palates of today’s younger consumers. For those who love mala food and mala flavours, this is the place to go to try it all.

The restaurant offers authentic Sichuanese cuisine derived from age-old recipes, but with modern twists. It also serves as a gateway to trendy dishes from China, such as the Trendy Peking Duck in Spicy Sauce, a hot commodity among foodies and purists in China that has yet to be introduced in Singapore.

The restaurant offers a comprehensive experience, with delicious dishes and an expansive range of drinks that leave both mind and body delightfully numb and gloriously tipsy. Numb Restaurant is Wang and Ma’s heartfelt way of promoting a cuisine they both hold dear to their hearts while keeping it relevant to the times and demands of younger consumers.

We were invited for a dinner tasting and these were the items we sampled, ranging from their wide array of appertisers to hearty main courses to sweet desserts at the end.

Imperial Sauced Sliced Beef (.80) – beef tendon, asparagus, broccoli

Sliced Pork Belly with Classic Garlic Chilli Sauce (.80) – Premium pork belly cuts drizzled with homemade chili sauce topped with garlic and chicory

Applewood Smoked Cripsy Chicken (.80) – skinless boneless chicken thighs smoked with Applewood, served with Tempeh and peanuts

Champion Beef and Mixed Veggies in Golden Spicy Sour Soup (.80 for small, .80 for large) – Premium snowflake beef, snail slices, konjac shreds, velvet shank mushrooms, king oyster mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms

Grand Duke Jiang’s Catch: Seabass in Specialty Green Pepper Sauce (.80) – fresh seabass, special roasted green pepper sauce

Succulent Friend Chicken Wings with Special Handmade Chips (.80) – featured spiced mid wings marinated with Sichuan spices, freshly fried handmade chips

We appreciate the wide variety of mala dishes available on the menu, presented in a modern way that also preserves traditional flavours and cooking methods. If you love spicy food, you have to try out Numb restaurant.

For us, the standout dishes for the night were the Seabass in Specialty Green Pepper Sauce, Champion Beef and Mixed Veggies in Golden Spicy Sour Soup and the signature Applewood Smoked Cripsy Chicken.

For the latter, the skinless boneless chicken thighs are smoked with fragrant applewood before being roasted with tempeh and peanuts for smoky goodness that ups the savoury factor. The fragrance of the crispy yet tender chicken is bound to enthral the taste buds.

For the other two seabass and beef dishes, I found them interesting to highlight as contrary to what most people expect, mala dishes do no necessarily have to be so spicy that they burn your tongue and cause you to sweat. There is also the ‘numb’ component to mala and these two dishes exemplify this well. They can be enjoyed by those with a lower tolerance for spice level.

All in all, Numb restaurant is a food paradise for fans of mala food who wants to go for a more elevated dining experience, compared to the usual mala hotpot mass market restaurants.

Numb Restaurant

Address: #01-12/13, 5 Straits View, Marina One, Singapore 018935

​Tel/Whatsapp: +65 9460 1960

Email: numb.restaurant@gmail.com

Opening Hours: Mon – Sat, 11am – 10pm