Will a Michelin star make a chef’s career shine in Singapore?
Being awarded one or more stars is the gastronomic equivalent of an Oscar. But several Singapore restaurants that have won them have subsequently shut their doors. How does the honour affect a winner’s fortunes?
Much has been said about what getting a star or two on the Michelin Guide can do for a chef’s career. Reflecting the common view in the industry, one star can supposedly raise a chef’s profile; two is likely to guarantee a major following. And three stars? Well, that’s the highest accolade a chef can dream of.
Nonetheless, for Singapore, expectations and reality have so far proved to be rather mismatched. Singapore’s only three-star Michelin restaurant, Joël Robuchon, left the island nation in June, along with its two-star establishment L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. Another two-star restaurant, the hugely successful Restaurant André, shuttered just four months earlier. Why weren’t the highest honours of the gourmet world enough to sustain these lauded restaurants? And what can winning a star actually do for restaurants listed in the guide?
One of the most commonly circulated claims in the market is that a Michelin star will greatly enhance the popularity of a restaurant and make reservations impossible in the months after the guide is announced. When I was on the review rounds for our LCO Shanghai and Bangkok Top 10 Lists, we reviewed many Michelin-starred restaurants and found that besides three-star Tang Court at The Langham, Shanghai and the two-star Le Normandie in the Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok, most of the one-star restaurants were relatively empty, with only three-to-six tables, with capacity hovering at less than 20 per cent when we visited.
Many Michelin-starred restaurants in Singapore also boasted impossible waiting lists. To verify these claims, we did some investigative work and found that we were able to get a lunch sitting at the two-star Waku Ghin within 24 hours. We could also get a reservation at Burnt Ends, a new one-star entrant with very limited seating, at short notice, albeit via “the right channels”.
Even as the waiting list may be long, the experience may not measure up as well.
“Although the atmosphere is rather ‘modern’ and you feel like it's a special culinary experience, roast meat isn't something you devour every day so I am not in a hurry to revisit Burnt Ends, especially since we had the counter seats, which weren’t very comfortable, and the food is rather expensive,” wrote Wendy Low, a Singaporean gourmand who managed to get a sitting at the newly-minted one-star restaurant for dinner in February, a few months before the guide was released.
In the last of our trilogy reviews, we visited three-starred establishments and spoke to the chefs to understand how they have fared since attaining a coveted listing on the Michelin Guide Singapore 18.