Food Picks
Japanese food with South-east Asian accents at Loca Niru
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Grilled isaki, or Japanese grunt fish, is served with a beurre blanc sauce infused with Peranakan flavours (left). A tomatillo salsa adds gentle tartness to a course of vegetable dumpling with soya milk foam.
PHOTOS: JOHN HENG
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- Loca Niru, a new 36-seat Singapore restaurant in House Of Tan Yeok Nee, integrates South-east Asian ingredients into its $298 eight-course dinner menu.
- Chef Shusuke Kubota, formerly of Omakase @ Stevens, uses ingredients like Malaysian tomatillos and curry leaves combined with Japanese elements.
- The standout dish is isaki fish with Nyonya Beurre Blanc, a French sauce infused with local rempah; the buah keluak roll is also exceptional.
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SINGAPORE – To signal that they are in Singapore, some overseas restaurant brands and chefs might do token tributes to the city they are in.
There might be a chilli crab Neapolitan pizza or an amuse bouche laid on a cracker made using a kueh loyang mould.
Seldom does a chef integrate quite so many South-east Asian ingredients into his food as chef Shusuke Kubota, 33, of newly opened Loca Niru.
The 36-seat fine-dining restaurant is in the 140-year-old House of Tan Yeok Nee, which belonged to the late Teochew tycoon. The heritage landmark opened to the public recently after extensive restoration works, and now serves as a multi-functional lifestyle destination.
Currently, Loca Niru serves just dinner, and the eight-course menu, priced at $298 a person, makes canny use of local ingredients which blend seamlessly with those from Japan and elsewhere.
One of the snacks is essentially a frog sausage rolled up in kadaif, a noodle-like pastry, and fried until delightfully crunchy.
It is not the frog that stands out – the roll would taste good no matter what the protein is. Rather, it is the curry leaf aioli that gives my palate a jolt. It signals that the chef, formerly of Omakase @ Stevens, is not going to be playing it safe.
He has even managed to source tomatillos from Malaysia. Also called Mexican husk tomatoes, they are indispensible in Mexican cooking, used both cooked and raw. They are also almost impossible to find here.
He deploys the tart fruit in a salsa with yacon, a sweet and crunchy root vegetable, to go with a vegetable dumpling filled with Malaysian burdock, bangkwang and more yacon.
That salsa adds a gentle tartness to the soya milk foam, which has been infused with the flavour of kombu or kelp.
The best course in the meal is the fish one. Isaki, or Japanese grunt fish, brined with salt, sugar, lemongrass, celery and water is chilled to dry out the skin and then pan-seared. The skin is atomically crisp and the accompanying Nyonya Beurre Blanc is a triumph. Chef Kubota infuses the classic French sauce with a rempah made with ginger flower, lemongrass, galangal, shallots, garlic, chilli, gula melaka and citrus.
It sounds ambitious and possibly foolhardy in the wrong hands. But it works. There are no harsh edges, just familiar flavours melded together perfectly. The smart diner will do well to ignore the whipped butter in the bread course and use the roll to mop up all that sauce.
Which brings me to what is possibly the best restaurant bread I have had in 2025: Loca Niru’s buah keluak roll. He does not hold back here either. The smokiness of the black nut is in every fluffy crumb, and its familiar slight bitterness too.
There is no shortage of fine-dining Japanese restaurants in Singapore. If you are up for an adventure, go to Loca Niru.
Where: 02-01 House of Tan Yeok Nee, 101 Penang Road locaniru.sg
MRT: Dhoby Ghaut
Open: 6 to 11pm (Tuesdays to Saturdays), closed on Sundays and Mondays
Info: Call 6592-5815 or 8227-4313; go to
