Ah, the roaring twenties. While many around this age in Singapore are gunning for a spot in corporate boardrooms, these five are carving their paths behind cutting boards.
I recently had the chance to sit down with five young chefs between 24 and 27 who are shaking up our dining scene in their own special ways. Some of their restaurants and hawker stalls have been open for just six months, others for two years, but what struck me most was their fearless approach to the future. In these unpredictable times, they’re saying “Scrap the five-year roadmap” and choosing to ride the wave instead. No backup plans, just a commitment to their craft and wherever it may take them.
Their stories are as distinct as their cooking. When Ernest Ang of Kokoyo Nyonya Delights decided to start his own Peranakan eatery fresh out of NS, he “didn’t know where [he] got [his] confidence from”. Six-month-old Kokoyo is now a hit in the heartlands, serving up recipes passed down from his great-grandmother. Meanwhile, Blackgoat’s Fikri Rohaimi is quite the romantic at heart, taking a deeply philosophical stance and emphasising ‘purity’ in food. His Jalan Batu stall is all about cooking protein over charcoal, and capturing food at its freshest, most à la minute state.
Then there’s former-athlete-turned-nasi-lemak-queen Shanice Lim, who turned her Covid passion project into a full-time gig. Two years on, So Lemak’s har cheong gai remains as popular as ever, with new dishes in the works. We also speak with Chef Rinto Sasagawa of Takahashi Singapore, who hails from a lineage of culinary legends in Japan. The rice-obsessed 26-year-old is the youngest head chef at an omakase restaurant in Singapore, and is relentless in his pursuit of perfection. Finally, Bryan Wai of Pilot Kitchen talks paying it forward after benefiting under the mentorship of Wong Jing Kai of Scaled by Ah Hua Kelong. His goal? To help young chefs stand on their own two feet through Pilot’s fun, experimental, and community-driven environment.
Here’s a glimpse into the minds of these five rising chefs in Singapore – from their culinary icons, to their proudest creations, and hopes for the future. This month, it’s all about young blood in the kitchen.
Ernest Ang, 24, Kokoyo Nyonya Delights
How did you fall in love with cooking: As a kid in primary school, I was very playful in the kitchen. I always created a mess – accidentally spilling things my grandma cooked, or smashing chilli padi into my older brother’s face. I found cooking very fun. It was like R&D – you can add random things to your dishes and it somehow either becomes very nice or disgusting. I enjoyed the process.
Your culinary hero: Gordon Ramsay. He earned three Michelin stars in three years. He received his first three stars in 2001, and he inspired millions of people with his professional cooking techniques. I don’t think anyone else is as influential as him in the industry.
A dish on your menu that best represents you: The beef rendang. Most people use chuck meat or short ribs, but here we use the Golden Coin, also known as the heel muscle. There’s a thin tendon in the middle which makes it different. The problem with this meat is that you have to cook it for very long, but this is my favourite beef part. Every time my grandmother brought me to the market to buy ingredients for rendang, she’d ask me to choose which part I wanted, and I always chose the Golden Coin. No one else – not that I know of – uses this cut for beef rendang.
The next five years: I haven’t thought that far ahead. At the moment, I just want to get this right. Hopefully I’m still here in five years, of course. For now, we plan to add more items to the menu. I want to introduce dishes like ayam buah keluak in about a month or two. We also plan to serve breakfast soon – the traditional kind with toast bread, coffee, and half-boiled eggs.
Fikri Rohaimi, 25, Blackgoat
How did you fall in love with cooking: One day when I was five or six, my granddad was cooking scrambled eggs and he seasoned it with a lot of olive oil. The intensity of the flavours woke me up. He would also cook a lot of lamb, and the smell would fill the house. I could see through the kitchen partition the image of him cooking and how the whole kitchen was smoky. That really inspired me. My first professional job was at Burnt Ends when I was 17. I was in between junior college and NS, and I spent about three months there as an intern. The experience latched on. It gave me reason and some level of value.
Your culinary hero: My colleagues. We are driven entirely by each other. There’s no particular big person here. All of us are equal. Everyone has their own set of talents – pastries, sauces, and so on. They inspire me daily. From the restaurants I’ve previously worked in, there’s Joel Chiam and Toraik Chua (TC) from Zén. And from the international crowd, a few chefs I’m inspired by right now are Victor Arguinzoniz from Asador Etxebarri, Bertrand Grébaut from Septime in Paris, James Edward Henry from Le Doyenné, and Jeremy Chan from Ikoyi in London.
A dish on your menu that best represents you: The lamb. We use really high-quality free-range Australian lamb, glaze it with a tare made of cooking caramel, and season it with rose and sumac. Then there’s the garlic jus. I like having a bit of floral notes and acidity in my food to balance out heavy and aggressive flavours like smoke, salt, and oil, and to brighten the palate.
The next five years: We’re hoping to move out, but we have zero plans right now. I would like to have a 30-to-40 or maybe even 50-seater restaurant. I hope the cuisine I serve will always be based on the purity of the produce and our ideas, and that the dishes will still be created based on my impulses, as they are now. I also want to work with a lot more vegetables, because I really enjoy eating vegetables. I have this ethos of wanting to serve food of the highest quality, even if it means that I profit less. I don’t know if it will work in the future, but I intend to find a balance between being able to survive financially and commitment to the cuisine.
Shanice Lim, 27, So Lemak
How did you fall in love with cooking: Previously, I was a full-time badminton national athlete. The turning point for me was when I had to decide between continuing to play badminton and pursuing sports studies, and doing something else. I knew that sports studies wasn’t my interest at all. At that time, I was watching a lot of food videos – Gordon Ramsay videos – and that sparked my interest. I also started reading books about kitchen life and the intensity of it all.
Your culinary hero: I look up to Anthony Bourdain, an American chef who has passed away. He has written a lot of books on the culinary scene and done deep dives into cultural foods, for example, travelling to Thailand and learning how some foods are the way they are because of the culture. Restaurant Zén also shaped me into who I am today. I remember one thing that Chef Tristin Farmer used to say: “Be comfortable with the uncomfortable.” That helped me look at things differently.
A dish on your menu that best represents you: The ayam berempah. It’s a classic. Not many people make this dish because it’s really labour-intensive and requires a lot of care. We only do small batches of it because cooking the whole chicken leg is tough. But I’m also building a second menu based on my expertise in charcoal grilling and woodfire cooking. I love grilling and it’s a skill I’ve honed over the years. I love cooking with fire and heat – it’s all manual, not automated, and you can really feel everything.
The next five years: I have no rigid plans as of yet. I’m interested to see how it goes. I’m also doing a lot of video and content creation, so that has opened many opportunities for me. I think two to three years can change quite a lot of things. For me, I started this without a backup plan and just took it from there.
Rinto Sasagawa, 26, Takahashi Singapore
How did you fall in love with cooking: I started cooking in my early teens. My father was sick and hospitalised for a very long time, my mother was working to support the family, and I had a younger brother at home. So I was the person in charge of cooking for the family. I wanted to make tasty dishes that were also healthy. I learned cooking on my own. In the beginning, it was very difficult, but as my family ate my food and grew happier each day, I felt that it was an honour to cook for them.
Your culinary hero: There are some great chefs that I respect, but I have always looked up to Jun Takahashi. I spent nine years at Takahashi in Tokyo and worked six days a week for almost 20 hours a day. To me, Jun Takahashi is a sushi master, but he is also a father figure and an older brother. He feels like family and has been a guide throughout my teenage life. Jun Takahashi uses the traditional skills he learned at Sushi Saito, and everything is based on science. The old-school sushi masters tell you “Do this”, and if you ask “May I know why?”, they don’t explain. But Takahashi always has reasons.
A dish on your menu that best represents you: Shari. I have a big passion for sushi rice. We use two types of rice here – Hokkaido rice for sweetness and Yamagata rice for umami. When cooking rice, just a little bit of variation in water and temperature can cause big changes in how it turns out. Every day I check and make adjustments – it’s stressful, but at the same time super interesting to me. Sushi is usually served nigiri style, but I created a mini donabe dish with sushi rice and charcoal-grilled fish. I’m a rice lover, that’s why our menu has many rice dishes.
The next five years: I want to make sure I run this restaurant well first – there’s the business meaning of that, but it’s also about expressing my thanks to Jun Takahashi. As for my personal dream, now I mainly use Japanese ingredients and culinary techniques, but in the future, I want to combine ingredients and techniques from all over the world to create a new style of Japanese cuisine.
Bryan Wai, 27, Pilot Kitchen
How did you fall in love with cooking: Since secondary school, I had an interest in F&N (Food and Nutrition) and Home Economics. I wanted to give cooking a try, so I went on to take up a Food & Beverage Business course at Polytechnic. I also did a lot of part-time work in cafés and restaurants. That’s where I really got exposed to the F&B world. My interest and enjoyment grew from there – I wanted to learn about flavours, different methods of cooking, and more.
Your culinary hero: I respect chefs who travel a lot and pursue their dreams of cooking in different countries. They’ll spend a year in Spain, a year in Australia, in China. I think that’s very cool because they’ll just leave everything behind and venture into a new world – maybe without even speaking the language – all in the pursuit of cooking and learning.
A dish on your menu that best represents you: Our butter cake dessert with cheese ice cream. I went on a trip to Japan and was very intrigued by this cheese ice cream I had. At the same time, I was thinking about the pound cakes that you’d get at old-school bakeries, and I wanted to make a really good one, so I went down this rabbit hole. Fast-forward, it’s now our signature dessert and has been on the menu since day one.
The next five years: Our lease is up this November and we’re in the midst of deciding if we should stay or move. I hope to see Pilot grow and to meet new, younger chefs like myself, work with them, and in the future help them open their own spaces too. Because I was given this opportunity, I hope I can give back and return the favour to other young people who want to try and start their own thing, but are afraid of stepping into the culinary world. That’s why we try to be a little more fun and approachable to the people who come in through our doors.
