Best eats of 2024: Best new restaurant – Na Oh

Where: Level 3 Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Center Singapore, 2 Bulim Avenue
Open: 11.30am to 3.30pm, 6 to 10pm (Wednesdays to Sundays), closed on Mondays and Tuesdays
Tel: 6263-1548
Info: Go to

hyundai.com/sg/naoh

and

str.sg/4uhM9

(reservations)

Who in tarnation would go – no, travel – to a factory in Jurong West for a meal? Turns out, a lot of people.

In 2024, a year when diners deserted restaurants, a booking at Na Oh, the 40-seat Korean restaurant at Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Center Singapore, was hard to get. It entailed stalking the reservation website, planning ahead and jumping on 2pm lunch bookings.

Na Oh, which in Korean means “the journey from inside out”, opened in June. It is a partnership between Korean-American chef Corey Lee, 47, of three-Michelin-starred Benu in San Francisco, and the South Korean car manufacturer.

The restaurant looks and feels upscale. Its tranquil vibe is at odds with the furious construction work on the main road, visible from tables by the window. Everything – furniture, fittings, crockery, cutlery, serveware – exudes quiet refinement. Korean artistry is on full display here. Staff glide about serenely.

The food is similarly elegant. Four times a year, the menu changes, and diners choose from three set meals, each with banchan and accompaniments to the main dish. For winter, the options are grilled Jeju beltfish, galbijjim and pheasant mandu soup with freshly milled rice cakes.

These four-course meals are priced at $78++ a person. Na Oh hits that sweet spot between fine-dining Korean restaurants and the raucous barbecue, fried chicken, tteokbokki and noodle joints in Tanjong Pagar and other Korean restaurant enclaves. Its spot is sweeter because the food tastes luxe, but is not priced that way.

Restaurants in Singapore backed by famous chefs or restaurateurs have not always done well.

Two of the worst meals I have had in 2024 were in these sorts of restaurants. In my seven visits to Na Oh since it opened, I have found the quality of the food to be consistently excellent.

What accounts for this? Singaporean chefs who have done stints at Benu say it is a very tough kitchen. Chef Lee and just one other chef make all the restaurant’s signature xiao long bao dumplings, served as part of its tasting menu. He is, the young chefs say, exacting.

In an interview with The Straits Times, the chef, who was in Singapore for the launch of the winter menu, says he uses a jeweller’s weighing scale in the Benu and Na Oh kitchens. He shows this reporter the recipe for homespun pheasant dumpling soup – it runs to several pages.

“Every single one of these steps is to prevent certain variables,” he says. “When I think of a dish and I’m writing a recipe, I’ll probably include 30 points they have to look out for, where to measure it, scale it, take the temperature or measure the salinity.

“Cooks have a really hard time when they first come to Benu because they spend so much time measuring and taking temperatures. They’re like, “I’m a cook, I’m used to the chef saying, yeah, reduce it until it’s syrupy.’ What does that mean, reduce it until it’s syrupy? You’re never going to get the same thing.”

That sort of precision shows in the food at Na Oh.

Standouts in the summer menu include the buckwheat and aged kimchi pancake served with lettuces harvested from Hyundai’s in-house Smart Farm; Samgyetang or chicken stuffed with glutinous rice, with a light but flavourful broth; and Butterfish cooked in a gamasot or metal pot with Golden Queen rice.

The autumn menu tells me the kitchen has really hit its stride.

Everything is spot on – Tangpyeong-chae or mungbean starch jelly with jelly fish, seaweed and precisely slivered vegetables; Charcoal-Grilled Pork Bulgogi with expert charring; Seolleongtang that comes in two parts: beef brisket and tendon in a clear broth, followed by housemade noodles in a milky beef broth achieved by long simmering; and Hwe-dupbap, raw fish and salted pollack roe served on rice, with a housemade sauce of aged gochujang, vinegar and house-fermented soya sauce. The umami-rich dried pollack and egg soup served alongside is no after-thought.

Skill and effort show on every plate, in every bowl, in the so-very-thin and nutty pastry for Autumn’s dried persimmon and walnut dessert tartlet.

The brain takes note of all this, and the heart surrenders to the joy of eating food that brings comfort and satisfaction.