Secco

Secco was built around sparkling wine before it was built around dinner. Billed as Hamilton's first prosecco bar, the James Street South dining room leads with bubbles, flights, and teapot cocktails — the kind of premise that usually leaves the kitchen as an afterthought. Secco's kitchen refuses the role. Owners Napinder Singh and Kenny Quirafu set a globally restless shared-plates menu behind the bar, one that moves through Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and Italian without asking the table to commit to a single cuisine.

The clearest single read on that kitchen is the Secco Platter, which loads one plate with an eight-ounce flat iron steak, cajun shrimp, adobo chicken, truffle fries, crispy brussels, king oyster mushrooms, and wagyu tacos, with a lobster tail available on top. Around it, the menu rewards grazing. Spicy Salmon Sushi stacks gochujang aioli, pickled jalapeno, and avocado on crispy rice; pork lumpia arrives with a house sweet chili; bao come three ways, from gochujang-honey fried chicken to Filipino-style pork belly to hoisin mushroom for the vegan order. Truffle Gnocchi is the richest thing on the menu — hand-made gnocchi in truffle cashew cream with Japanese mushroom and black truffle, indulgent enough to read as a splurge while staying fully vegan.

Put the drinks and the plates side by side and the logic of the kitchen shows. The bar program — prosecco, champagne, flights, cocktails, and teapot cocktails — wants food that arrives in waves and keeps a table grazing, and the menu obliges with small plates, oysters in cucumber mignonette, and shareable centrepieces rather than one main per person. The cross-cultural pantry never tips into a sampler. Korean gochujang, Japanese crispy rice, Filipino adobo, and Italian truffle read as one cook's vocabulary instead of a tour through someone else's. That coherence is what separates Secco from a downtown bistro that happens to pour bubbles.

The partnership predates the prosecco. Singh and Quirafu cooked together at The Diplomat, according to local reporting, before taking over the former Mezcal storefront and opening Secco on James Street South in 2022. Quirafu runs the kitchen, and the menu's range tracks back to a cook who treats Filipino, Japanese, and Korean cooking as first languages rather than accents borrowed for effect. The building does double duty, too — a sister restaurant, 11:11, operates on the lower level, giving one address two distinct personalities.

The menu also looks after the table that doesn't eat the same way. Truffle Gnocchi, Hoisin Mushroom Bao, Crispy Brussel Sprouts, and the Secco Caesar all land vegan, and an Almond & Pandan Cake closes the meal without dairy; the Beet Salad with whipped feta, strawberry vinaigrette, and cashew brittle is built gluten-free. Oysters arrive with cucumber mignonette and house hot sauce, and dessert runs to an Ube Crème Brûlée scattered with edible flowers. It is a long menu, but the breadth is the point — a group rarely has to negotiate down to the one dish everyone tolerates.

Dinner is only one of Secco's settings. Weekend brunch carries its own menu — Ube French Toast on thick-cut brioche, a steak Benny, Chicken N' Waffle under gochujang honey, Filipino Fried Rice topped with a fried egg — broad enough to read as a separate restaurant rather than a shortened dinner card. Pre-order High Tea and a dinner-side High Tea After Dark push the same shared-plates idea toward ceremony, while Friday and Saturday service runs until one in the morning. The result is a single address with several front doors: a brunch table, a planned date-night reservation, a late round of bubbles, a group working its way across the platter. Reservations are the cleaner way in for most of those visits, though walk-ins are taken when seats are open. Each one opens onto the same kitchen that started behind a prosecco list.