Endlessly dynamic and diverse, Singapore is no longer a bore
Far more than a mere stopover, the island nation excels at boundary-pushing design, playful eateries and inventive civic restoration – and all in orderly fashion.
Few cities shape-shift as swiftly and stylishly as Singapore. Long hailed as a design-forward metropolis and a multicultural melting pot, the Lion City is constantly reinventing itself while staying deeply rooted in its layered heritage. In recent years, that evolution has moved beyond its glitzy downtown, with new developments springing up in forest reserves, heritage districts, and island enclaves. From inviting resorts to culinary labs and repurposed schools-turned-creative hubs, this new wave of openings reflects a city that’s more dynamic, diverse and outward-looking than ever. Here are the latest and greatest arrivals to seek out on your next visit.
Singapore city guide
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Beds to book
Singapore’s hotel scene has had a shake-up over the past few years: brands such as The Standard, Como and Edition made their much-anticipated debuts, while floor-to-ceiling refurbishments gave stalwarts like the Mandarin Oriental and Capella Singapore fresh appeal. But between those marble-heavy lobbies and ritzy rooftop bars, thoughtful newcomer 21 Carpenter stands out as a more locally rooted entry. This 48-room bolthole, set on the fringe of Chinatown and Clarke Quay, occupies a 1930s remittance house that once served the local Chinese community. Singaporean architecture firm Woha has given the heritage building a sculptural extension clad in perforated aluminium and installed a rooftop pool and garden teeming with Chinese medicinal herbs such as nutmeg and gambir. Nods to the building’s past also shine through in the interiors of the guest rooms, where calligraphic artworks and poems etched in the window screens pay homage to the letters once sent home by migrant workers. Downstairs, the Art Deco-styled bistro Kee’s adds another layer to their stories, with spice-heavy drinks and contemporary pan-Asian recipes drawing on local ingredients – think melt-in-the-mouth beef cheek rendang and fries with curry mayonnaise.
Meanwhile, the grandest of grande dames, Raffles Singapore, has branched out with a lavish new island outpost on Sentosa, the beach-fringed playground off Singapore’s southern tip. Opened last March, the Raffles Sentosa Singapore delivers an all-villa island hideout that feels worlds away from the gleaming skyline – despite being just a 15-minute drive from downtown. Perched among free-roaming peacocks and gardens pinned with century-old ficus trees, each of the 62 villas opens to a private pool and linen-draped cabana, while interiors by Yabu Pushelberg blend Raffles’ tropical roots with breezy modern touches such as travertine finishes, soft lighting, and a calming palette of sage, coral and cream. Switched-on butler service and a welcome Sentosa Sling – made with passionfruit and calamansi, it’s a less cloying riff on the original – echo the heritage of the brand’s original Beach Road flagship. But with a sprawling resort pool, a hushed spa and easy access to nearby Tanjong Beach, the vibe of its sibling skews more barefoot luxe than colonial formal.
In the jungle-covered outskirts at the opposite end of town, Banyan Tree’s new Mandai Rainforest Resort swaps the beach for the tropical haven of the Mandai Wildlife Reserve. Built on the site of a former animal hospital for the nearby zoo, the resort has been carefully meshed with its surroundings: trees felled during the construction were reincarnated as furnishings in the airy, vine-dripping lobby; concrete walls take their texture from bark-cast impressions; lushly planted roofs and walkways allow birds and macaques to frolic uninterrupted. Out of the 338 rooms, the stilted Treehouse Suites are the ones to book. Set at different ends of the resort, these elevated, spaceship-like digs seem to have been plucked straight out of Avatar, and come with panoramic views of the mist-shrouded Upper Seletar Reservoir, where monkeys rustle the canopy around your balcony and hornbills glide past at dusk.
Back to school
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The Lion City’s latest creative hub might just be one of its most ambitious yet. In the heart of the River Valley district, New Bahru brought together more than 40 homegrown designers, chefs and wellness gurus to blow new life into a salmon-pink former school building. Its labs and classrooms now host fashion boutiques and concept stores such as Make by Ginlee, where you can create bespoke bags from climbing rope and pleated fabrics, and Studio Yono, where Dutch designer Kaïa Nelk has assembled an eye-popping collection of homeware, stationery and vintage furniture by labels like Rotterdam-based Foekje Fleur and Studio Arhoj from Copenhagen.
At its new flagship store on the ground floor, local fashion collective Beyond The Vines stocks its full line-up of boldly coloured basics (you’ll spot its nylon “dumpling” bags dangling from the shoulders of fashionistas all around Asia) and offers on-the-spot customisation and repairs. Upstairs, the high-design Hideaway spa and bathhouse delivers everything from 60-minute pick-me-ups with a deep-tissue massage and cold-plunge dip to multi-hour retreats that could include detoxifying mud wraps, magnesium baths, and gua sha scalp massages.
You’ll want to stick around for dinner, as New Bahru houses outposts from some of the city’s top bars and kitchens. At Kotuwa, Colombo-born chef Rishi Naleendra – who cut his teeth in Sydney at Tetsuya’s and Yellow – dishes up fresh takes on the flavours of his hometown, with highlights including curry-smothered Sri Lankan mud crab and kottu roti (a Sri Lankan street food staple) with soft-shell crab or baby jackfruit. Odem, designed by London-based Nice Projects, specialises in makgeolli, a cloudy Korean rice wine, of which it stocks one of the largest collections in the city. Order the five-cup flight of some of the signature bottles from craft breweries around South Korea to explore the liquor’s layered intricacies. And don’t miss the cloud-soft, soy-glazed brioche with gamtae seaweed butter.
Marble-clad Somma, on the next floor up, is chef Mirko Febbrile’s culinary playground. Drawing on his Puglian roots and his travels around the globe, the six-course tasting menus deliver classic Italian flavours through a contemporary lens: expect grilled pigeon breast brushed with bee-pollen emulsion, or Adriatic sea eels in a mole-inspired sauce. If you can’t score a reservation (tables tend to book out well in advance), hit up Bar Somma next door, where easygoing Italian staples such as bucatini alla Nerano (a cheesy fried zucchini pasta) and amberjack crudo come paired with reinterpreted classic cocktails, including a Sidecar with orange-caramel miso and an oloroso sherry-spiked Negroni. Similarly drink-centric is Bar Bon Funk, the third outpost of chef-owner Keirin Buck’s constellation of buzzy wine bars. At this living room-like listening bar, it’s all about easy drinks, small bites and killer soundtracks: the funky P.B.W. cocktail (a mix of peanut butter-infused genever, verjus and fermented strawberry honey) and the Parisian gnocchi with chanterelles and white corn are both must-orders.
Sip and savour
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Singapore’s dining scene is having a moment – again – but this time, its latest wave of restaurants leans into mood and multiplicity, dishing up concepts that blur the lines between global flavours and local edge. Leading the way is Air CCCC, a cross-cultural culinary hub tucked into the leafy surroundings of Dempsey Hill, where the name (short for Awareness, Impact and Responsibility) only hints at what’s going on inside. The two-storey building, a Modernist civil servant clubhouse revamped by Rem Koolhaas’s Oma Architects, is part sustainable food lab, part cooking school and part restaurant where Noma alum Matthew Orlando and Will Goldfarb of Bali’s Room4Dessert turn locally sourced ingredients into Southeast Asian-inspired dishes that feature the likes of cashew-pulp ricotta, noodles made from fish bones, and granita from syrupy fermented papaya skins.
Oft-overlooked ingredients also take centre stage at Fura, an intimate gastro-bar on the second floor of a Chinatown shophouse. Duo Christina Rasmussen and Sasha Wijidessa offer a bold look into the future of food by prioritising local and often imperfect produce over imports. The plant-focused menu features only a handful of animal proteins, all derived from invasive species such as spotted coral jellyfish or locusts – the latter is turned into a punchy garum drizzled over squash and pickled beets.
A few blocks away, Tamba brings Liberian jollof to the land of chicken rice – and with it a much-needed dose of West African soul. Opened by Canadian restaurateur Kurt Wagner, who spent much of his childhood on the African continent, the restaurant is an homage to Wagner’s Liberian adoptive brother, Tamba, whose portrait overlooks the space from above the bar. Interiors channel a sort of Afrofuturist opulence – all burnished brass, mud-covered walls and tribal art pieces – while the playlist swings from Fela Kuti to Burna Boy. The five-course set menu offers a delectable introduction to the region’s bold flavours, with fiery Nigerian suya skewers of beef and lamb heart, pillowy agege bread with smoked bacon butter, and jollof rice.
If you’re after something breezier, hit up Sentosa’s Tanjong Beach Club, which recently emerged from a revamp by Sydney-based designer Kelvin Ho that amped up its coastal-cool credentials with orange parasols and striped fabrics. Expect ceviche platters with finger lime, beer-battered fish and chips, and grilled tiger prawns in fiery sambal butter. On weekends, the terracotta-coloured loungers fill with sun-seekers sipping rosé Spritzes to a DJ soundtrack of Balearic beats. As golden hour approaches, it’s as close as Singapore gets to a slice of Saint-Tropez – minus the jetlag.
Neighbourhood watch
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Singapore’s compass of cool points east where, in recent years, a new crop of chefs, baristas and designers have taken over the pastel-hued Peranakan shophouses of the Joo Chiat district to launch some of the city’s hippest cafés, wine bars and concept stores. Among the earliest arrivals was Common Man Coffee Roasters, an all-day café serving single-origin pour-overs alongside mushroom-topped quinoa bowls and pancakes drizzled with salted caramel. Crane, along the district’s main drag, comprises a co-working space and homewares boutique where you can pick up groovy glassware, ceramics and prints by Singaporean artists and designers (drop in on weekends for the weekly pop-up craft fair). Stop by Sojao for bed linen and loungewear made from organic cotton, head to Rye boutique for minimalist womenswear, and seek out the sleek Basa shop for fragrant hand soaps and marble-heavy candle-holders.
For clued-in locals, though, Joo Chiat has long been synonymous with food. Launched around 1925, Chin Mee Chin Confectionery still draws crowds for its charcoal-grilled and sinfully buttery kaya toast, and plenty of residents cross town for the coconutty laksa soup at 328 Katong Laksa (a recent extension of the MRT’s Thomson-East Coast Line has made the area easily accessible). Newcomers include Province, where young-gun chef Jia-Jun Law spotlights Southeast Asian flavours in tasting menus that could include a scallop-heavy spin on Vietnamese tôm (grilled shrimp on sugarcane sticks) or Thai river prawns with winter greens.
The new Forma bills itself as “Joo Chiat’s Little Italy” and backs up that claim with a menu of house-made and hard-to-find pasta varieties such as Puglia’s sagne ’ncannulate and plump Sardinian ravioli with potatoes and crab. After, hit up Birds of Paradise for your gelato fix. At this home-grown ice-cream parlour, flavours – white chrysanthemum, osmanthus and pear, roasted sesame – take their inspiration from Singapore’s natural bounty and come served in house-pressed waffle cones speckled with dried thyme.
Culture currents
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The Peranakan Museum, which recently reopened after a four-year renovation, is hard to miss. The eye-catching former school building on the corner of Armenian Street is a colourful example of Peranakan architecture, which mixes Neoclassical styles with colonial and tropical touches. With more than 800 antiques spread over three floors, the museum houses one of the world’s largest collections of Peranakan objects (from intricate batik kebaya tunics to gem-studded family heirlooms), and guides guests through the origins and influences of the Straits-born Chinese, Malay and Indonesian people who have shaped much of modern Singapore. Pop in even if you skip the exhibits: the free-to-visit museum shop, operated by design label Supermama, is a treasure trove of seriously smart souvenirs, such as porcelain soup spoons with nostalgic prints and saucers designed in collaboration with Michelin-starred Peranakan restaurant Candlenut.
In an unassuming industrial block on the outskirts of town, Whitestone Gallery Singapore, which opened at the end of 2023, looks at Asia’s artistic heritage through a contemporary prism. As the first Southeast Asian outpost in a string of galleries that stretch from Taipei to Tokyo, the inviting Kengo Kuma-designed space champions mostly Asian art with a heavy focus on Japan and China. Exhibitions change frequently, and have so far highlighted the cartoonish sculptures by Chinese artist duo Li Wei and Liu Zhiyin, and eye-popping pop art pieces by Manila-based artist Ronald Ventura. The recent Wonders of Nature exhibition zeroed in on the child-like fascination sparked by the works of Yayoi Kusama and Osamu Watanabe. The same industrial block is also home to a host of other galleries, including a temporary outpost of The Singapore Art Museum and the contemporary Southeast Asian art-focused Gajah Gallery.
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