Favorites in F&B Singapore

By Julian A. Chua

Most people have a favorite in mind when it comes to food and beverage places or local dishes in Singapore. After all, Singapore is a vibrant cosmopolitan city with a wide variety of cuisines and modern eateries to match the food.

What better ways to get good recommendations on local Singapore food and places to dine at, than from the professionals in the F&B industry right here?

Meet four prominent individuals in Singapore, the movers and shakers of the F&B industry locally. Here's the scoop on their favorite local cuisines and dining hotspots among other favorite places of theirs in Singapore.

Jean Madden

Jean Madden is the Chief Marketing Officer at Next Gen, a Singapore-based food tech company combining unique and powerful plant proteins to provide the most incredible culinary and dining experiences in the world.

What are your top three favorite Singaporean dishes?

Some of my favorite dishes include Ice Kacang as it reminds me of my hometown’s famous snow ice topped with mangoes.

Everyone’s favorite Roti Prata is the perfect comfort food.

Popiah is sweet, salty, crunchy, and soft all rolled into one. A party for the taste buds!

What are your favorite places in Singapore to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner respectively?

For breakfast: I like Common Man Coffee Roasters. Their Veggie Wonderland is a consistent winner. The scrambled eggs on sourdough toast with baby spinach salad and broccolini for greens, charred tomatoes, grilled halloumi, portabella mushrooms, and avocado make for the perfect breakfast dish!

For lunch: It would be Din Tai Fung. My kids love it! Veggie dumplings, fried rice, noodles, and stirfried nai bai with garlic are some of our favorite picks. We recently discovered the yam dumplings and they taste great - hot, spicy, sweet - dipped in chopped chili and soya sauce.

For dinner: I’m a big fan of Cicheti, serving mouthwatering wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas. If I am in the mood for something more casual, I would choose The Goodburger or Three Buns to get a bite of my favorite burger made with TiNDLE, an alternative chicken protein made from plants.

Where are your favorite places to have a coffee or drink in Singapore?

The best place for me to get a coffee would be home. No one makes a better oat latte than my husband. For the best vibey drink, I would head to Super Loco Customs House for a margarita.

What are your favorite places to celebrate special occasions?

Spago at the top of Marina Bay Sands would be my pick to celebrate special occasions with my family. It has great food, great people and epic views of the city I love.

Richard Hemming

Richard Hemming, Head of Wine Asia at 67 Pall Mall, has worked in the wine trade for 20 years, and is one of fewer than 500 “Masters of Wine” in the world. His career started in UK retail with Majestic Wine before spending three years as a freelance wine writer and educator.

What are your top three favorite Singaporean dishes?

Carrot cake: My favorite is Lau Goh Teochew at Zion Road, my local hawker. Looks terrible, tastes awesome - and it's easy on the chili.

Popiah: I love the freshness of the ingredients, especially when you get to see it being made.

Kaya toast: The ultimate hangover cure. Believe me.

What are your favorite places in Singapore to have breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper respectively?

Breakfast: The rosti and sausage at Riders Café is pretty hard to beat.

Lunch: Spago at MBS is such a great venue for views over the bay with delicious food, super-friendly service and a cocktail bar that is impossible to leave once you get stuck in.

Dinner: McDonalds. I'm serious. Double cheeseburger please.

Supper: Can I say 67 Pall Mall? Unless you know somewhere else can you get delicious short-rib croquettes at 11pm.

Where are your favorite places to have a coffee or drink in Singapore?

For beer: In Bad Company at Joo Chiat has a superb range of imported and local brews and the most painfully addictive hot sauce in Singapore.

Lime juice from pretty much any hawker is super refreshing on a hot day - which is every day.

I don't drink coffee, but the best cup of tea in town is at my house, using any of the blends from A.Muse Projects, a wonderful local tea blender.

What are your favorite places to celebrate special occasions?

Restaurants that deliver great food, brilliant wine and ambiance without charging crazy prices: Fool, Praelum and Le Bon Funk are some of my faves. But if you're paying, then Raffles Hotel will do just fine, thank you.

Anant Tyagi

Anant Tyagi, Owner and Managing Director of Restaurant JAG, initially worked in some of the best hotels in Ireland before moving to Singapore in 2009 where he transitioned into restauranteering. After a solid two-decade long career working in both the hospitality and F&B industries, he decided to distill his wealth of industry experience to launch Restaurant JAG in March 2018, together with Chef Jeremy Gillon.

What are your top three favorite Singaporean dishes?

Chwee Kueh: This is just sublime. The silky texture of the hot rice cake coupled with the earthiness and depth of chai poh is just divine. Add to this the establishment’s chili, and you have a stellar dish. I just love it.

Thunder Tea Rice: This is a complex dish. I love the combination of herbs utilized in making the tea paste, which is so herbal and coriander forward that it lingers on the palate. Truly an exceptional dish.

Pork Dumplings in Chili Oil and Spicy Sauce: This is simplicity at its best. Delicate pork dumplings with a vinegar-based sharp chili. The acidity and spice cuts through the richness of the pork. I can never have enough of this.

What are your favorite places in Singapore to have breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper respectively?

Breakfast: Chwee Kueh at Jian Bo Shui Kueh at the Tiong Bahru Food Center

Lunch: Restaurant VUE is my favorite spot for lunch. The quinoa salad is wonderful, as is the Barramundi en Papillote. The team there led by Derrick is on point and always looks after me well.

Dinner: Bar-Roque Grill. I have probably been there more than 100 times since they opened. It is always exceptional and so very warm. This is an institution in Singapore. I typically order a tarte flambée, a snail fricassée, a hanger or a ribeye along with a gratin dauphinoise and finally an apple pie. I have rarely deviated from this selection.

Supper: Ming Yen Seafood at Lau Pa Sat. The folks there are amazing. I have been going here since 2012 and it is exceptional. I usually go there with either very close friends or my entire team. We always over-order, but the food is so good that we always finish everything. Typically, we order a sambal sting-ray, sambal cockles, gong gong, lots and lots of vegetables, butter chicken, seafood soup and a huge fried rice of the day.

Where are your favorite places to have a coffee or drink in Singapore?

Coffee: I love Nylon Coffee Roasters and Populus Café.

Drink: I truly love Tippling Club and RPM. Jigger and Pony for late ones as they are open late and just so hospitable.

What are your favorite places to celebrate special occasions?

Odette. Since the day they opened, it has always been Odette. I’d go three times a year (if not more) to mark special occasions. Nothing compares to Odette. They are precise, warm, jovial and strike great and yet candid conversations. This is what a restaurant should be. I love it.

Chef Damian D’Silva

Damian D’Silva is the head chef and owner of Rempapa, a Peranakan restaurant located at Paya Lebar, and an advocator of Singapore Heritage Cuisine. This successful restaurateur has a string of successful restaurants under his belt, namely Soul Kitchen, Immigrants, Folklore, and Kin. Known for his passion that focuses on Singapore food by elevating little known recipes to a wider audience, Chef Damian also starred as a judge on the reality TV series MasterChef Singapore -- becoming affectionately known as “the grandfather of heritage cuisine.”

What are your top three favorite Singaporean dishes?

Choosing three Singaporean dishes can be daunting as we share so many similarities on both food and culture with our neighbors. In this instance, the dishes that you can only find in Singapore and have become my favorites are as follows.

Laksa Siglap: This is somewhat similar to the Peranakan version of laksa. However, its base rempah is lighter and more "curry-like." Also, it uses fish instead of prawns. The noodles are thicker, almost udon-like with a chewy texture. There's kerisik to give the dish an added flavor and texture. The dish has assam to accentuate acidity.

Indian Rojak: Some people might say this dish is similar to pasembur in Malaysia, but it's not. It's totally a different dish. Indian rojak is what I like to call the Indian version of "tempura" and it's served with an addictive red gravy that's complex and moreish.

The fried offerings that were dipped in batter are refried before serving to ensure a hot and crispy offering that is doused in gravy before being eaten. The mixture of crispy, sweet, and savory is sinful and it's difficult to stop once you start.

Loh Kai Yik: This is a dish that's not for the faint hearted as it's a nose-to-tail dish. The dish consists of well-cooked pig innards, chicken wings, cuttlefish, and kangkong thrown in for good measure.

The dish is stewed with a mixture of fermented soya bean and sweet prawn sauce till everything is well-amalgamated. This can take between three to four hours and ingredients are cooked at different timings to ensure the right texture is achieved. The end result is a mélange of flavors and textures that has an unforgettable depth of flavor.

What are your favorite places in Singapore to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner respectively?

Breakfast is usually eaten at a hawker center before work and depends on which market I'm at. It's mostly noodles or occasionally thosai. On my day off, it's similar, unless I've made plans to have breakfast with friends, then it can be anything.

Lunch is a staff meal when I'm working and it can be excellent. On my day off, I usually head to a hawker center in the West to sample other hawker dishes. Sometimes I eat zhi zhar, dim sum, or even Japanese food. I do not have specific places that I go to as I love variety and I eat anything and I do mean anything!

Dinner is not my main meal when I work as I try to eat one meal a day or maximum two. However, sometimes on my day off I will have a meal at a restaurant. But it can be anything from local hawker food to zhi zhar to a restaurant specializing in ethnic cuisine.

Where are your favorite places to have a coffee or drink in Singapore?

Coffee is local kopi-O for me. I'm really not into coffee with milk. My morning routine is at the markets and hawker centers. I usually go to specific stalls in the different hawker centers.

On my day off it's the same kopi-O, although very rarely, when I'm with a friend, I will have a latte!

I'm a sucker for good local kopi and my taste buds crave for the right balance of bitter and sweet with the aroma that I grew up with.

What are your favorite places to celebrate special occasions?

On my last birthday, I was working and I have worked for most of them. However, with my mother, I usually bring her together with the family to a Chinese restaurant. Mum is really fussy, but loves her Teochew food.

So, we try to visit all the Teochew restaurants in Singapore, and of course there are favorites, like Huat Kee, Chin Lee, Imperial Treasure Fine Teochew Cuisine, and Ah Orh.

It's comforting when everyone in the family, especially Mum, enjoys the food and I treasure the occasions where we sit together as a family and have a meal. We are all just too busy with work and find it difficult to spend time together.