Singapore’s dining scene has seen radical change, in stark contrast to the street cuisine of chilli crab and chicken rice it is more famous for, with some in the industry saying expansion has been too fast.
“Singapore had a massive explosion of Michelin star chefs because of the casinos,” said Yenn Wong, owner of Jia Boutique Hotels, which operates restaurants and bars in the city and in Hong Kong, as well as a Shanghai hotel.
“There’s now an oversupply of restaurants making it a very challenging environment. Some are just so expensive and not what a typical Singaporean can afford.”
Wong recently teamed up with British chef Jason Atherton, another Michelin starred chef and a protege of Gordon Ramsay with restaurants in Singapore, to open 22 Ships, a Hong Kong tapas joint that has created both buzz and long queues in its first months.
“Sometimes you never know whether it’s going to be difficult working with big chefs,” said Wong, adding that Atherton’s understanding of the Asian palette and market has been crucial to his success.
“The dishes aren’t very heavy, they’re clean which suits Asian tastes, they’re easy to understand. There is a creative twist but not too much.”
Wong contrasts it to one of her first projects, a Hong Kong restaurant called Opia that offered Australian cuisine but which has since closed down.
“When we first opened there was a very good response. After two years it started to tail off, because you can’t really pinpoint what ‘modern Australian’ cuisine is. We learned and decided to focus more.”
— ‘Everyone wants to be at the top’–
Even if the food is right, transplanting a chef into a new kitchen thousands of miles from home can be tricky. It is not just the menus that need to be adapted.
“In terms of having a new kitchen crew, that’s a huge change for, say, a chef coming from New York,” said Sekhri. “There are five different languages being spoken in the kitchen for a start.”
At 28 years old, Vincent Lauria is head chef with IHM Group in Hong Kong, which operates a cluster of restaurants including the Italian Linguini Fini in Central.
He quit Batali’s upscale Babbo restaurant in New York for an opportunity to work in Asia in 2009 before being approached by IHM.
