Singa-bore no more

With a directional bar scene, world-beating restaurants and chic hospitality, Singapore has changed.

The Singapore night life, like at the Fat Prince, isn’t what it used to be. Picture: Supplied

Not so very long ago – as recently as the last decade, let’s say – Singapore wasn’t necessarily a place you’d send a friend to have a good time. Its streets, parks and public spaces were pristine, of course; the skyscrapers of its CBD, housing banks and law firms and shipping conglomerates, hummed with industry; its miles of climate-controlled shopping malls were thick with designer boutiques; its infrastructure was exemplary. But genuine urban allure was – and more or less had been, as even many Singaporeans would admit, since the island nation’s inception in 1965 – pretty thin on the ground. Its unofficial (and very unsanctioned) tag line might have been “Singapore: safe, clean, rich – and boring”.

Raffles Hotel, Singapore, Picture: Supplied

Not that there weren’t initiatives, both private and public, mooted to mitigate this state of affairs. But they were efforts that often felt like attempts, occasionally overt, to manufacture appeal for a certain stratum of tourism. Among these was the arrival of Formula 1 in 2008 (at the time privately underwritten in part by the local hospitality magnate Ong Bang Seng), which brought its night race and F1 Rocks concerts series along for the ride. There was the launch of the Singapore Flyer (“bigger than the London Eye!”), and the development of Gardens by the Bay (including the weirdly wonderful bio-domes visible from the air as you cruise into Changi). There was the completion in 2011 of the $US5.5 billion ($8 billion) Marina Bay Sands, one of two integrated resorts (leisure casinos) in Singapore, whose three 55-storey towers are crowned by arguably the world’s most famous and photographed rooftop pool, and whose subterranean reaches are thick with dining venues bearing the names of superstar chefs from other countries: Ramsay, Tetsuya, Boulud, Savoy. But between the 15,000sq ft Louis Vuitton boutique and the humble satay stall, any semblance of a “cool” Singapore was hard to pin coordinates on.

National Gallery. Picture: Supplied

Somewhere along the way, however, that has changed. Shifting circumstances, attitudes and generations have collided fortuitously, opening the city up – to reinterpretation, to new talent and ideas, to business opportunities and entrepreneurship. As a result, Singapore in 2019 is, genuinely (some would say finally), a place with energy – and an emerging new identity. The esteemed San Pellegrino Best Restaurants awards accorded Asia’s number-one honour this year to Odette, a stunning space manned by a 30-something superstar sommelier who is a local, and owned by another young local whose restaurant company is one of Asia’s most successful – all with nary a marquee-name chef in sight. Ask any major mixologist which Asian city is on their radar and Singapore is the beckoning blip most will cite: its cocktail bars are garnering buzz and praise from Hackney to the Lower East Side to Chippendale, with, again, home-grown talent running everything from design concepts to micro-distilling. Venues across Clarke Quay and Tanjong Pagar, such as Jigger & Pony, Native, Operation Dagger, the pocket-sized Junior and the seminal 28 Hong Kong Street – a no-sign, speakeasy-style joint that ignited the scene when it opened in early 2013 – have conferred the unlikely status of leader on a city that previously only ever followed.

Atlas in Parkview Square. Picture: Supplied

Culturally, Singapore is rewriting its own norm as well. When the National Gallery – an impressive synthesis of two early-20th century buildings, the former Supreme Court and the former City Hall, by local architecture firm Studio Limou – opened in 2015, it did so with a commendable collection of Southeast Asian art, and a vast Singtel-sponsored exhibition space intended for the sort of blockbuster exhibit that would, so the received wisdom went, probably always be imported from some other, more important institution. But last winter came Minimalism: Space. Light. Object, curated by the gallery’s dynamic young director, Eugene Tan – a rigorous assemblage of more than 150 major works by artists ranging from Donald Judd to Olafur Eliasson, Anish Kapoor and Mona Hatoum – the first-ever such survey of the movement in Southeast Asia, and worthy of a tour of its own.

“You have to remember that 14 years ago there was no Dempsey,” says Wee Teng Wen, the 38-old owner of award-winning Odette. Wee is founder-director of the Lo & Behold Group, a restaurant portfolio of 16 venues, among them a rooftop bar, a pizzeria, and on Sentosa island, the city’s first proper beach club (co-operated by Australian expats Christian and Julian Tan, brothers of photographer-Aquabumps founder Eugene Tan). Wee is referring to one of Singapore’s lifestyle pulse points: Dempsey Hill, whose disused British army barracks, for some years in a state of rolling development, now showcase an outpost of London’s Dover Street Market and Candlenut, the world’s only Michelin-starred Peranakan-Chinese restaurant, among numerous other bars, eateries and boutiques.

“Some of these openings have been more successful than others,” Wee says of the lifestyle proliferation across his hometown. “But really it’s only in the last five or so years that you’ve seen a significant amount of real storytelling happen.”

Born to a prominent local family and educated in the US, first in Philadelphia and then New York, Wee moved home in 2005 and perceived immediately how wanting the city’s lifestyle scene was. “It lacked originality, and vibrancy. And it struck me that what other cities had wasn’t just more fun and excitement, but also that they were proud to tell local stories in interesting ways. I wanted to create Singapore stories for this generation.” His first venue, a rooftop bar called Loof (“it’s a little play on how Asians can’t pronounce their ‘r’s”), featured a sleeked-up version of a traditional mamashop (the city’s local mom-and-pop convenience stalls), stocked with old-school tuck-shop snacks and games – the nostalgic ephemera of Wee’s childhood, repurposed with style and wit. Singapore flavours were celebrated in food and cocktails alike. “This was at a time when the big things were all Western copy-pastes,” Wee notes, “so it felt fresh.”

In 2017, 12 years and as many openings later, Lo & Behold expanded into hospitality with The Warehouse, a sleek, meticulously curated boutique hotel retrofitted into a listed godown on the river; it promptly rocketed onto Hot and It Lists around the world.

Around the same time, he co-founded Straits Clan, a private members’ club, together with local food authority Aun Koh – part of a mini-wave of such clubs here that also includes 1880 on Robertson Quay, offering the exclusivity of the English model alongside curated programming for members, from panels and talks to performances to fashion shows, some of which are open to the interested public (Straits Clan shares reciprocity with CUB in Sydney and Mello House at The Treasury in Perth).

Its clubhouse is the former New Majestic Hotel, a beautiful Peranakan building owned by Loh Lik Peng, who opened Sydney’s Old Clare (and another Straits Clan founder-backer); its four storeys offer a lush courtyard bar, a jewel-box gym, a co-working space, and an atelier dedicated to showcasing local makers and designers. The food, needless to say, is excellent. And while it’s been fulfilling to bring global speakers and names to the membership at home, Wee says, it’s been more so to provide locals with a real platform. He cites the Straits Clan 2019 culinary calendar, which will bring in Singaporeans busy making their names in the kitchens of the likes of New York’s Momofuku and Swedish destination restaurant Faviken, to cook for members.

The Australian interior designers Matt Shang and Paul Semple, longtime expats who founded Distillery studio 2008 (it was acquired by Hassell in 2015; Shang and Semple have stayed on as principals), attest to the shift as well. They would know, having been pivotal figures in the evolution of Singapore into a world-class destination for discerning drinkers. They are the team behind, among many others, the faultlessly glamorous Manhattan at the Regent hotel, where during happy hour waitresses in old-school LBDs circulate with hot pastrami sandwiches and taster cocktails to a soundtrack alternating the likes of Eric B and Rakim and Cannonball Adderley; and Atlas, the towering 7400sq ft destination cocktail bar famous for its 1000-plus gin collection (it was 15th on the World’s Best Bars list last year.) They have also positioned themselves as Singapore’s, and one of Asia’s, preeminent creators of co-working spaces – a new concept and lexicon around how to live and work for buttoned-up Singapore, as Semple notes, that is proliferating hugely here.

“When we first founded Distillery, you could feel that there was a sort of ramping up – people in the market doing more interesting things, and just as importantly changes in some of the big family offices, with younger generations taking the lead,” says Shang. “A lot of Singaporeans of my generation studied overseas, in the US or the UK, and some have brought in partners from those places.”

He cites Ong Ker-Shing and Joshua Comaroff, the Singaporean and American directors, respectively, of Lekker Architects, who met at Harvard in the early 2000s. Lekker, like Shang and Semple’s Hassell, is now among the most dynamic and original firms working in Southeast Asia. They also tip their hats to the founders of Singapore’s beloved PS Café, Peter Teo and Philip Chin, graduates of fashion and law school in London who grew their now eight-strong chain of insouciantly chic bistro-style restaurants out of a coffee bar at the back of Projectshop, the grassroots fashion label they founded in 1999 in a storefront in the Paragon shopping centre.

Odette. Picture: Supplied

“At the time there was no good coffee, anywhere, in Singapore,” recalls Semple. “There was Spinelli’s and Delifrance, and that was it. It was pretty dire, so interesting people would hang out there.”

In 2005, the first standalone PS Café opened on Harding Road in Dempsey; the rest is (local) history, and one of the great success stories of the new Singapore.

“They [Chin and Teo] were kind of middle-class local kids who went overseas, came home and then set out to create this completely new thing,” says Semple – a brand that was undeniably informed by their time abroad, but also deeply rooted in their own food culture. “I remember being in the back of the Paragon store years ago and listening to them talk about their aspirations, and then watching them segue into F&B. It’s amazing to think what they’ve managed to achieve.” These days that extends to exportability: the first international outpost of PS Café opened in Shanghai in January.

Semple cites also what he describes as “a shift in the cultural confidence of Singaporeans, and in what they stand for – from about five years ago, I’d say, around the 50th anniversary celebrations. There’s a sense of nostalgia, and pride; it’s more and more a place that’s about newness and regeneration, and there is definitely a focus on stories.”

Which brings us back, yet again, to food – that most universal and enduring of Singapore’s narratives. Singaporeans have always located their deepest connections with each other though food; relationships are forged, businesses launched and deals made, conflicts resolved over a shared experience of a cuisine that is as richly diverse as the heritage of its citizenry. When late last March I met John Conceicao, the Singapore Tourism Board’s Oceania Regional Director, the government had just applied for UNESCO World Heritage status for the city’s hawker centres, those axes mundi of authentic Singapore life. “They’re so deeply a part of the culture here,” he says; “and yes, they are a big tourism draw, but they wouldn’t be sustainable if locals didn’t still support them 100 per cent.”

Equally though, Conceicao’s remit has evolved dynamically with the scene: he describes the “Singapore Socials” he has hosted in Sydney and Melbourne, with bartenders from top venues such as Native and Operation Dagger, together with Masterchef champion (and Singapore-born) Sashi Cheliah. He has started profiling neighbourhoods that are new bastions of drinking and dining – Jalan Basar, Amoy Street, Tiong Bahru – which 10 years ago were nascent manifestations of next-generation enterprise and creativity.

At the same time the STB has partnered with NOSHTrekker to market home dining experiences (carefully curated, and not cheap, evenings for those who want to take it up a level up from the hawker scenario). “We help with the storytelling, but the content is all there,” Conceicao says. “People may not realise that each neighbourhood, each culture, has its own complete and discrete experience to be had.” Australians seem especially keen, he notes, and the stats back that up: the Australian tourism spend here has shown growth for two years running, and Australians make up a significant part of the food and bar consumption. (The market is also one of Singapore Airlines’ best connected, with daily, sometimes multiple, non-stops from Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane.)

One Lion City story – one of its oldest and best-known – is especially relevant in 2019: that of Stamford Raffles and his legacy. This year marks the 200th anniversary of his arrival at what was, in the early 19th century, a tiny Malay trading outpost called Singapura – then putatively ruled by the Sultans of Johor, but controlled with iron oversight by the Dutch VOC. Raffles, in the tradition of the British East India Company he represented, did some nimble political back-channelling, replacing the sultan with his far more biddable brother to gain sovereignty of the island for the Crown (a status ratified some years later by treaty).

Raffles is largely remembered well in Singapore history, having during his time banished slavery, put tight controls on gambling and, importantly, commissioned the city’s first urban plan, one that acknowledged its multiracial, multicultural status.

Neon Pigeon. Picture: Supplied

Various celebrations and events commemorating him are in the offing throughout 2019, but the most exciting will probably be the reopening in August, after a two-year closure, of the grand flagship hotel that bears his name. The charms and traditions of Raffles run deep, from peanuts and Singapore Slings in the Long Bar to mooncake selections every autumn, and always have. These weren’t (quite) obscured by the slightly tired upholstery and worn furniture in the enfilades of rooms, shaded by palms and whitewashed porticoes across its multiple courtyards, but a new face was overdue, and is timely now. New York-based Champalimaud Design was brought in to revive the rooms; the eating and drinking venues – 10 of them – will buck the local trend somewhat, with a roster of names that reads like a who’s who of the gastronomic pantheon, from Ann-Sophie Pic to Alain Ducasse.

But Raffles re-emerges onto a hotel scene that, once anaemic, has itself flourished in the past few years. Besides the 37-room Warehouse, whose elegantly spare interiors showcase local craftsmanship, there is the newest outpost of Six Senses – that flag’s first urban hotel, spread across two sites: a gorgeous series of interconnected shophouses atop Duxton Hill (Six Senses Duxton), designed by Anouska Hempel; and a heritage building in Tanjong Pagar, a few blocks away (Six Senses Maxwell), with extravagant Jacques Garcia-designed rooms and public spaces.

A very sleek new InterContinental opened in 2017 at Robertson Quay, which, besides elegant rooms by local firm SCDA, houses the 1880 members’ club and several excellent dining venues. And on a prime block of Keong Saik road – another new nexus of Singapore dining – Ashish Menchharan, the Singapore-born founder of 8M Real Estate, which owns and manages heritage shophouses across the city, has just launched KeSa House, a 60-room hotel-residence concept with multiple communal spaces, elegant studios and terraced suites (which rent by the day, week or month), and – naturally – a ground-level roster of alluring watering and noshing holes. It’s yet another space to watch, in a city that increasingly – deservedly – has all eyes upon it.