Chef Johanne Siy’s labour of love opens in September

SINGAPORE – In the year since she left Lolla, Johanne Siy has travelled to France to source for oysters from a farm in Brittany and to visit Maison Mons in Roanne to see how it ages cheese in a disused underground railway tunnel.

The Filipino-Chinese chef has gone to Japan to visit ceramics makers in Arita; to the Philippines to see how Asin Tibuok, an artisanal sea salt from the island of Bohol, is made; and to Binan in Laguna province to touch base with Finebone Philippines, the last remaining fine bone china manufacturer in the country.

If you think she is opening a restaurant, you would be right.

Aro is set to open in September. The 26-seat restaurant in Mohamed Sultan Road is now under construction, in the space vacated by one-Michelin-starred Esora.

“It’s scary and exciting at the same time,” Siy, 45, now a Singaporean, says.

She and her 52-year-old tech consultant husband are funding the low seven-figure set-up cost, together with, she says, “a few supportive friends”.

Labour of love

The travel and sourcing all relate to the name she has chosen for her restaurant. She says that “aro” in Latin means to “till the soil” and, in the dialect of her home town, it means “love”.

“From these words, Aro is born. It is a deeply personal undertaking that can only be described as a labour of love. It encapsulates the ethos of everyone we’ve chosen to work with to bring this vision to life,” she says.

“The more I embark on this journey, the more I realise that for people in the restaurant industry, and people who cook for a living, what we do is really a labour of love.

“There are easier ways to make money.”

She would know. In 2003, the fresh university graduate came here from the Philippines after the company that hired her, Procter & Gamble, relocated its regional headquarters to Singapore. The 22-year-old was with other young expatriates from her home country and elsewhere, and they formed a family here. On weekends, she would cook for them.

If life had turned out differently, she might now be holding a senior position in marketing and branding. But she started looking forward more to the weekend cooking than to her day job.

In 2010, after six years with the company, she packed her bags and headed to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

Since graduating in 2012, she has worked for many a notable restaurant. In New York City, it was at three-Michelin-starred Le Bernardin for two years; in Singapore, it was at two-Michelin-starred Restaurant Andre for four years.

After it closed in 2018, she went to Scandinavia, where she worked at three-Michelin-starred Noma and one-Michelin-starred Relae in Copenhagen, Denmark, and two-Michelin-starred Faviken in Jamtland County, Sweden, among other places.

She joined Lolla in 2020, bringing her delicate tasting menus to the restaurant, which was known for its small plates and counter dining.

A sense of fun and knowledge about the ingredients she used was behind dishes such as Oyster, Oyster, Oyster!, where grilled oysters were draped with paper-thin slices of king oyster mushrooms and topped with oyster leaves. For Mayura Wagyu Tri-Tip, cacao nibs were strewn over the beef and the beef was served with charred Swiss chard – both are part of the cattle’s feed.

A place of her own

The chef says she looked at many spaces before settling on Esora’s old spot. That restaurant’s counter-dining concept fit in with her plans for Aro.

“We want that connection with diners,” she says, adding that the space will look like a home. To underscore how personal the space is, it will be cosy, with wood and textiles featuring prominently and art from her own collection.

She adds: “I want the experience to feel personal, and want to share knick-knacks from my travels, ingredients I’m obsessed with, art that inspires me and things that I collect.”

Aro will serve tasting menus in the $200 to $300 a person range.

Asked why she is choosing this format, when diners seem impatient with long, drawn-out meals, she says: “It’s a better vehicle for conveying to guests what we stand for, what we are about. I think it’s not so much that we don’t appreciate long dinners anymore, maybe it has to do with how compelling the story is.”

For the food, she will draw from her journey and experience as a chef and work with artisans and producers she believes in.

She says: “My role is actually more like an agent who tells the stories of the communities behind the produce we use. I feel that in Singapore, what’s missing is that connection to the land, where our food comes from. That’s the gap I want to bridge.”

The menus will be seafood-forward because she grew up in the coastal province of Pangasinan, five minutes from the beach. She also wants to highlight “remarkable yet unsung ingredients” from the Asia-Pacific region. These would include salt, fish sauce and seaweed.

“On the menu, you will find Asian indigenous ingredients taking their rightful place alongside conventional ‘luxury’ ingredients,” she says. “As the experience is rooted in my personal journey, we do not define what we do in terms of national cuisines, but we take a back-to-basics approach of letting ingredients define the possibilities.”

With restaurants crashing left, right and centre, how does she think diners will take to Aro?

She says: “Value goes beyond just the price point. Singapore diners are so evolved. People are well-travelled and we have to bring our A-game to break through the clutter.

“What we do is fundamentally rooted in honesty, sincerity and a genuine desire to connect and nurture. I hope that intent comes through the experience and people see value in that.”