Johanne Siy

The Path

Kitchen formation is visible in the list of restaurants that shaped Johanne Siy: Le Bernardin in New York, Café Boulud in New York, Restaurant André in Singapore, Noma in Copenhagen, Relae in Copenhagen, and Faviken in Sweden. Each role added another layer to the same discipline—precision, refinement, technique, adaptability—so that the craft itself became cumulative rather than episodic. Taken together, those years show a cook trained to read a room, absorb a system, and work within exacting standards without losing personal control. At Lolla in Singapore, the Head Chef role gives Johanne Siy a place to translate that experience into a direct point of view. The authority of the title lies in the work it requires: consistency, judgment, and the ability to shape a menu from a broad range of references without flattening them. What emerges is not a résumé on display, but a practiced voice built from years spent moving across kitchens and keeping the thread intact.

The Work Today

At Lolla in Singapore, Johanne Siy’s current work is associated with a 2023 recognition that brought her restaurant and her name into sharper focus. The attention did not create the practice; it made the practice more visible. Her output there reads as an ongoing exchange between regions, ingredients, and inherited food memory, rather than as a single fixed statement. Her cooking is described as combining Asian and Mediterranean flavours, and that combination signals range without forcing a gimmick. One side of the plate carries the tastes and habits of the region that shaped her; the other draws from a broader culinary vocabulary that can travel without losing structure. The value of that mix is in how it lets her work across references while keeping the line back to origin intact. Championing Filipino culture on the global stage is central to how Johanne Siy’s work is understood. That responsibility changes the terms of the plate: it is not only about style or composition, but about what gets represented and how. In her hands, the food carries cultural memory as working material, making it legible to a wider audience without stripping away context. The method behind that work is described by Siy as continued learning: “The more I cook, the more I realize there is so much I have yet to learn.” That stance matters in trade terms because it keeps the work open-ended. The same is true of the stories she chooses to tell: “The more stories I tell, the more it dawns on me that there are so many other stories that remain untold.”

Signature

Johanne's signature dishes include Avocado, smoked eel, and eel consommé and yuzu.

In Their Words “The more stories I tell, the more it dawns on me that there are so many other stories that remain untold.”

Acclaim

Johanne's honors include Asia's Best Female Chef (2023).