Shinji (Bras Basah Road)

Rice, fish, temperature, timing

Rice, fish, temperature and timing set the pace for Koichiro Oshino, chef at Shinji (Bras Basah Road) in Singapore. His station is Edomae sushi, a discipline that gives very little cover to the hands: the rice must arrive alive, the neta must meet it at the right warmth, and the sequence must carry the counter without noise. Oshino first served as master chef at Shinji in Singapore from 2010 to 2020, a decade in which the house helped define omakase dining for the city. He then spent 2020 to 2025 as chef-owner at Oshino, still in Singapore, before returning to this frame of counter, sequence and restraint. At Bras Basah Road, his current role brings those chapters back into contact: the discipline of the earlier house, the authorship of his own room, and the tighter grammar of sushi made piece by piece in front of the guest.

Edomae held at the counter

The craft here is not breadth. It is repetition under pressure. Shinji (Bras Basah Road) traces its method to Edo-style sushi, with omakase as the governing form and the chef setting the order of the meal. The house describes its work through kata and do, form and discipline, words that fit a counter where each serving depends on the interval between cut, rice, seasoning and hand. The team are native Japanese artisan chefs shaped by more than 15 years of mentorship, and the kitchen keeps its attention on traditional preparations such as smoked sashimi and marinated fish. Oshino’s own stated focus is Edomae sushi. In his words, the work is a matter of honoring tradition while bringing originality, refining skill and intuition, and leading flavor through character. That sentence could sound broad in another room. At this counter it narrows quickly into practice: the pressure of rice, the angle of a cut, the order in which the sea reaches the guest.

The Bras Basah counter

Shinji began at Raffles Hotel in 2010 and moved to Carlton in 2017, while the wider house opened a St Regis outpost in 2014. Bras Basah carries that city history without turning it into theatre. The room’s work is built around omakase and omotenashi, with the okami-san overseeing the hospitality and the counter holding the main exchange between chef and guest. The setting matters because Edomae sushi asks for proximity. The guest sees the hand, but the point is not display; it is calibration. Oshino’s return to Shinji after his chef-owner years gives the room a particular tension, one chef bringing a personal style into a form that still asks him to submit to sequence. The house holds one Michelin star, but the more exact measure is the continuity of the bench: Shinji, Oshino, Singapore, and the same Edomae grammar that has followed him from 2010 through 2025.