Asian dining concepts sizzle in Singapore

After a period of respite due to the pandemic, Singapore’s F&B industry is buzzing again.

Known for its affordable hawker fare, dazzling cocktail bars and clutch of award-winning restaurants headlined by the likes of the three-Michelin-starred Odette, the Little Red Dot has, of late, been experiencing a bumper crop of new restaurants proffering concepts that bring to the fore the diverse cuisines of Asia.

While a handful of openings are concepts plucked from renowned brands overseas, the vast majority are helmed by Western cuisine-trained chefs like Kevin Wong and Law Jia Jun who chose to dovetail into cuisines that mirror their roots.

For a taste of the region’s rich heritage, put these restaurants on your radar.

Seroja

When planning his signature dish for the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Competition 2019-21 – a jasmine tea duck broth made simply with duck wings and kaffir lime – Kevin Wong dived deep into his Malaysian-Chinese roots. The quest to understand his heritage led the former Head Chef of Meta on a journey of discovery of craftsmen, growers and fishermen from the Malay Archipelago. Seroja, his one-year-old restaurant at Duo Galleria, with one Michelin star, celebrates the complex flavours of his motherland in a beautifully nuanced multi-course menu punctuated with native Malaysian herbs, spices and ingredients, the highlight of which is the signature dish that secured him a top three finish at the Competition. Chase down your meal with the restaurant’s non-alcoholic pairing, arguably the city’s most progressive

Born

Formerly the Executive Chef of the now-defunct Restaurant André (Singapore), Co-Executive Chef of Raw (Taipei) and Executive Chef of Sichuan Moon (Macau), Zor Tan stepped out of Andre Chiang’s shadow to call the shots when he debuted as Chef-Owner of Born in June last year. Set in an atmospheric 1903 conservation shophouse, Born is a sprawling 6,000-square-foot space with a soaring ceiling overhung with a gigantic Dutch-made paper art installation. Despite its colossal proportions, the one-Michelin-starred restaurant caters to an intimate group of just 36 guests in the main dining room (and more in the private dining rooms). In a contemporary French-Chinese, nine-course menu punctuated with standouts, Tan’s signature monkfish dish beckons with gloriously smoky, spicy and savoury flavours.

Province

Having spent two years training at California’s Atelier Crenn and Manresa as a young chef, Law Jia Jun built a solid foundation in the French culinary arts. But the 29-year-old Singaporean “felt lost” because he could not relate to the Western cuisine he was serving. After returning to Singapore during the pandemic, he took the down time to acquaint himself with Southeast Asian ingredients and flavours. Showcasing his personal take on a cuisine that draws on Southeast Asian influences, Jia Jun’s seasonally-changing seven-course menu at Province stands for its unusually affordable pricing. With just eight seats in the counter space-only windowless eatery, you’ll need a lot of luck to score a seat, however. Jia Jun’s tribute dish to Manresa, presented as an allium-packed raviolo, is to-die-for.

Onmi

Korean restaurants are plentiful in Singapore, but those sandwiched between top-tier fine-dining and casual K-BBQ are few and far in between. Enter Onmi, the city’s first traditional Korean diner. Housed in a dark brown-bathed shop house space on Amoy Street, this new kid on the block is helmed by Ulsan-born Head Chef Young Cheol Park who serves a multi-course hansik menu proffering about 20 items, mostly small bites. Uniquely in Singapore, the menu offers a glimpse into what traditional Korean royal court cuisine might look like in the 21st century. The most impressive course, o-cheop-bansang, is a parade of charcoal-grilled ganjang-marinated beef short ribs, flanked by braised beef, beef bone soup and a bowl of thistle-scented rice, augmented with petite portions of seasonally changing banchan (side dishes).

Meta

Meta turns eight this year and Korean Chef-Owner Sun Kim celebrated this milestone by moving his one Michelin-starred flagship to its third – and arguably grandest – home to date at 9 Mohamed Sultan Road. Bigger and airier with a massive stainless steel and marble-clad open kitchen, yet more intimate and catering to a smaller group of just 26, Meta’s atmospheric new home takes its design inspirations from the Korean bangjja (hand-forged bronzeware), onggi (earthenware) and hanok (traditional Korean house). Similarly, its cuisine pays tribute to Kim’s heritage but does not confine itself to tradition. His nine-course dinner menu is perfect from start to finish but the bincho-grilled Jeju Island abalone set on a bed of abalone liver porridge flecked with kamtae (Korean seaweed) and lily bulb petals is peerless.

Imamura

Singapore has had a bumper crop of Japanese restaurant openings post-pandemic but Imamura at Amara Sanctuary, Sentosa, stands out for many reasons. For one, Chef-Owner Hirofumi Imamura is also a farmer who plants crops, including the shiso that he infuses in white wine for the welcome drink served to all guests. Also an avid R&D worker and an advocate of minimum wastage, Imamura-san saves the scraps of wagyu, tai (snapper), maguro (blue-fin tuna) and other proteins and uses them to create garum (a sauce made by fermenting proteins using koji), which he uses to season the original protein. His unconventional wagyu course, for instance, is a huge but thin sliver of Kagoshima wagyu that he slow-cooks and serves with egg yolk foam dressed in beef stock that he makes with house-cured beef ham seasoned with beef garum.

Pangium

Pangium is a stable-mate of one-Michelin-starred Candlenut and the first fine-dining Peranakan restaurant in the world. The realisation of Chef-Owner Malcolm Lee’s dream to elevate his craft and raise the game on a heritage cuisine that is widely viewed as home spun, Pangium is named for the tree that bears the low-key chef’s favourite ingredient: buah keluak (or Indonesian black nut). Housed in a purpose-built building in the Gallop extension of the lush Singapore Botanic Gardens, Pangium is more than just a restaurant, it’s also Lee’s playground to research local heritage ingredients, flavours and techniques, which he distills into a gloriously presented nine-course tasting menu. The results are stunning. His butter-pastry take on the Eurasian pang susi will make you beg for seconds.