What a difference a year makes. In that short period, Dempsey Hill has been transformed from off-the-beaten-track destination to lively bolthole for fashionistas, stylo-mylo mavens, foodies and culture-vultures. The setting – lurid green vegetation and a sense of getting away from it all, though it’s just moments from Orchard Road – certainly helps the Hill’s lustre, oiling expectations and generally creating a receptive mood for even the most jaded restaurant reviewer. 

Pity, then, that a good many of the eateries that have sprung up on the Hill have not quite fulfilled that potential. Barracks, unfortunately, is one of these – an irritating reminder of how good intentions in this country’s restaurant scene are often waylaid by poor planning, staffing and execution. 

First, the good news. The restaurant is, apparently, a former mess hall attached to the larger British army barracks (hence the name), which has now been converted to a quirky maze of function rooms, an alfresco bar and a spa, called Camp and House, respectively. Camp’s timber-decked area is particularly charming, especially in the evenings, with its romantic views of the jungle, and as you lounge back, sipping an aperitif, you can’t help but realise that our former colonial masters sure knew how to pick a spot on which to build a home. Inside Barrack’s large space the vibe is cheerfully slick, part-Jeff Koons in humour, part-Alice in Wonderland in its design conceits. But all this counts for nothing once you sit down. 

The missteps begin with the menu – messy, with deliberately designed scrawls and scratches. On our first visit, the cover page was missing, which meant we were reading dish descriptions and wondering what all the adjoining letters in circles meant. As it turned out, ‘W’ is for warm, ‘C’ for cold, ‘V’ for vegan, ‘LO’ for lacto-ovo and so on. Meanwhile, ‘F’ stands for functional and when we asked the waitress what that meant, she replied, ‘When you have a function here, you can eat this.’ Okay. 

Some of the dishes are denoted ‘S’ for spa, which after several meals there, we’ve deciphered to mean ‘far too little salt and oil’. Which is why the dry and listless prawn capellini only got a lift when we asked for more olive oil and salt (and if we’d had our way, chilli flakes and garlic oil). This was followed by a macadamia-crusted roast pumpkin salad that was bizarrely salty on one end, but completely bland on the other. 

At another dinner, the Deep Sea Threesome – described in the menu as a ‘spectacular platter’ of prawns, calamari and mussels – was let down by bland seafood and a side of flat mango salsa with no kick and an equally weak chilli sauce. Like the pumpkin salad, Happy like a Clam was schizophrenic: the flavourful but soggy green tea soba noodles sat confused in their bath of seafood broth – there was too much liquid to be called a dressing, but not enough to be called soup. Worse, the ratatouille-stuffed eggplant was, for $22, criminally expensive – a few small logs of ordinary, bland and dry vegetable topped with an undistinguished tomatoey sauce and a limp blanket of couscous. And in every dish that had prawns, the crustaceans tasted like they had been tenderised, resulting in an unrealistically crisp snap to the texture. 

There were bright spots, though they were never incandescent. The wagyu beef was nicely fatty and juicy, but undersalted. The truffle fries were a delight, but the accompanying beer-battered fish had the texture and forgettable taste of an indifferent fishcake, and an underseasoned one at that. 

Of the desserts, the butterscotch cake was excellent: creamy, perfectly sweet and crunchy with walnuts. The strawberry shortcake (described on the menu, with great hubris, as ‘the best I have ever tasted’) looked and tasted like a mushy sponge cake with a soggy shortcrust; the bottom half of the carrot cake was warm, but the top half was cold. The triple chocolate brownie promised an ‘oozy truffle centre’ which, despite much poking with a fork, we never found. When we asked, the plate was whisked away and returned with a new piece and an apology that the kitchen had given us a corner piece, which had no ooze. It was moister, but no oozier, than the first. 

A word about the service. Without exception, Barracks’ staff is all young. To their credit, they’re earnest and pleasant, and run off their feet. To the restaurant’s discredit, this youthful enthusiasm has not been properly trained. Our water and wine glasses were never refilled without a request. And when you do the party trick of taking orders without writing anything down, please note: it’s irritating to have one’s conversation interrupted when you come back a few minutes later to double-check the order. Staff don’t have set stations, which meant we had different people serving us through the night. And here’s a tip: cutlery placed together on an empty plate is a universally recognised signal that it’s time to clear the table – it’s not a cue to keep walking to and fro while peering over our shoulders. Another tip: no diner should ever have to look at his plate and wonder why he has no cutlery with which to eat. At an average of $60 a head before wines, the customer expects and deserves more, not the culinary equivalent of a court-martial.