Kappo dinner with Nonya beurre blanc and kedondong granita at Loca Niru

SINGAPORE – Diners here are used to seeing wagyu, Hokkaido scallops, Yamanashi grapes and peaches and other premium Japanese ingredients on the menu at Japanese restaurants.

One new fine-dining restaurant, Loca Niru, has these, plus curry leaf, calamansi, sugar cane and kedondong, on its tasting menu.

The 36-seat restaurant, which opened on Nov 6, is in the newly restored House of Tan Yeok Nee in Penang Road. It is the last of the Four Grand Mansions built by Singapore’s Teochew tycoons that is still standing, and underwent extensive works that took four years.

Its new owner, the Karim Family Foundation, has spent an estimated $100 million on the project, including more than $80 million to purchase it in 2022. The late tycoon’s home is now a lifestyle hub with galleries and dining and entertainment options.

The foundation is the philanthropic arm of a group of companies owned by the Indonesian-Chinese Karim family, led by palm oil tycoon Bachtiar Karim.

Loca Niru, headed by Japanese chef Shusuke Kubota, 33, is the first of two restaurants that the mansion will house. The other, a more casual one, is expected to open in 2026.

Both are part of the family’s Gaia Lifestyle Group, which runs restaurants such as The Black Pearl, a fine-dining Chinese restaurant at Odeon 333, and Japanese beef tongue restaurant Gyutan-Tan in Tras Street. It is also opening the Singapore outpost of Tokyo udon restaurant Udon Shin at Takashimaya Shopping Centre later in November.

Its principal, Ms Chai Karim, 28, says of Loca Niru: “We don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves by calling this just a Japanese restaurant. It is ultimately a gastronomic restaurant that has a Japanese philosophy grounded in French techniques, with ingredients that are both regional and global.

“What I think sets us apart is a prolific use of South-east Asian and regional ingredients.”

Chef Kubota, who is from Nagano prefecture, has made numerous trips to Malaysia with his team and on his own to source ingredients for his first tasting menu.

He trained at the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka, then went on to train and work in France – at, among other places, Domaine Les Crayeres in Champagne; and worked in Tokyo before coming to Singapore in 2020 to work at Omakase @ Stevens.

The eight-course, $298-a-person tasting menu has familiar ingredients worked into almost every course.

Curry leaves flavour aioli for an amuse bouche using frog; fatty tuna is served with a roselle and calamansi vinegar; and with the fish course is the Nonya beurre blanc, using a spice paste infused into the classic French sauce made with white wine, vinegar, shallots and butter.

Other ingredients he uses or will be using include chocolate, nutmeg and lion’s mane mushrooms from Malaysia.

“I feel most of the Japanese chefs in Singapore don’t really try local and South-east Asian ingredients,” he says. “Because I’m living in Singapore, I want to try. I want to make something new and different from other fine-dining restaurants.”

The name of the restaurant reflects the sort of impact he wants to make, he says. Loca Niru comes from a Zen Buddhist idiom, Hakuba Roka ni Iru. The phrase describes a white horse stepping into a field of white reeds and blending seamlessly with it, and is meant to evoke perfect balance and co-existence.

The beef in the wagyu course is smoked over sugar cane pulp left from squeezing out the juice, and the juice goes into the glaze for the meat.

Tart kedondong, a fruit often made into a refreshing drink, turns up in dessert at Loca Niru, paired with Shine Muscat grapes. The chef uses kedondong juice to make granita and jelly set with agar-agar.

He says of the fruit: “I tasted it and it is very sour, with a tough texture. I didn’t think it was possible to use it straight. But it has strong acidity like citrus, so that is very good for dessert.”

Thinking outside the box is one reason Gaia recruited the chef for Loca Niru. The family were fans of his food at Omakase @ Stevens.

Ms Karim says: “Chef Shu naturally saw the connections between the use of these ingredients, the property, and the philosophy and ethos of the restaurant. And then he explored these ingredients himself. We want to be able to go direct to the farmers and small suppliers to understand the quality of the wares.”

The restaurant, which she says cost $1.4 million to fit out, will initially serve dinners only, with lunch service expected sometime in the first quarter of 2026.

The mansion also has space for events, and has already received bookings and hosted events there. Gaia is looking to be able to provide catering for these events, Ms Karim says.

Despite the challenges in the food and beverage (F&B) scene worldwide, the group is pushing ahead with new openings.

The Singapore outpost of Udon Shin opens on Nov 13, 2025 at Takashimaya Shopping Centre. The original restaurant in Yoyogi, Tokyo, has six seats and two tables, and draws hours-long queues. As in Japan, the noodles will be made on the premises in Singapore.

Ms Karim says it took some convincing, when talks started in February 2025, for the owners to choose Singapore for their first overseas restaurant. She first had udon there two years ago.

Coming up in the second quarter of 2026 is the second dining option at the mansion, to be housed at the central courtyard area on level one. This will be an 80-seat all-day restaurant and bar with different vibes in the day and night.

The group is also developing a Japanese brand in-house, and is looking to bring in a casual Asian-fusion dessert brand from overseas.

“This year, we were observing the same things that the rest of the industry has been observing – the struggles of doing F&B in Singapore,” she says. “In these more trying times, a lot of Singaporeans tend to gravitate towards what is familiar – familiar foods that are of great quality.”

“We try not to put out too many boundary-pushing, innovative kinds of concepts. It is going back to food that is good and well done, and at a very reasonable price,” she adds.

Correction note: In an earlier version of the story, we wrongly credited the photo of Loca Niru’s interior. This has been corrected. We are sorry for the error.