Candlenut

Rempah before the pass

Spice pastes come first for Malcolm Lee, Chef at Candlenut in Tanglin, Singapore, before the room settles into service. The method belongs to Peranakan cooking, where rice, curry, sambals and family recipes carry as much authority as any formal station. Lee trained at At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy in 2008, then opened Candlenut Kitchen in 2010 with his mother, bringing the food of his grandmother and his own childhood into a professional kitchen without cutting it loose from the domestic table.

His role here is both Head Chef and owner, but the work reads less like authorship than custody with a knife in hand. He has spoken of menus grounded in the comfort foods he most wants to eat, rice, curry and sambals among them. At Candlenut, that memory does not stay soft. It becomes a discipline of grinding, braising, tasting and returning to proportion until a dish can hold ancestry and restaurant clarity in the same bowl.

Buah keluak handled the long way

The kitchen’s Contemporary Straits approach gives familiar Singaporean foods a sharper frame while keeping their Peranakan structure legible. Rempah is made in house, not treated as a background seasoning. Curries, stews, stir-fries and sambals carry the program, with candlenut used for body and buah keluak for its dark, earthy bitterness. The black nut demands caution and time: boiling, fermenting, washing, scrubbing and soaking come before it reaches the pass.

The menu can move from Mum’s Chicken Curry, with local chicken, potatoes and kaffir lime, to Wagyu Beef Rendang, where beef cooks in a coconut-rich spice base until the sauce tightens around it. One recorded version of the rendang takes four hours. Lee also pushes buah keluak into a dessert register with Buah Keluak Ice Cream, pairing the nut with 80% Valrhona chocolate, salted caramel, chocolate crumble, chilli and warm milk chocolate espuma. The gesture is modern, but the ingredient still sets the terms.

A former barracks with low music

The room at COMO Dempsey sits inside a former British army barracks, with high ceilings that let conversation rise without hardening. Dark wood, tile work, turquoise walls and flowers give the dining room its Peranakan cues without turning the setting into a cabinet of references. Straw lanterns hold the light low. Piano jazz and modern pop have been part of the sound of the room, kept at a level that lets the table stay with the food.

Service moves around tasting menus and a la carte plates with an upscale casual ease. The food remains the anchor: sambal heat, coconut weight, tamarind brightness, the savoury pull of nuts and braises. Candlenut received one Michelin star in 2016, the first awarded to a Peranakan restaurant, and Malcolm Lee still works bench-side. Lee keeps returning the cuisine to the family table that formed Mum’s Chicken Curry.