Luxe for less: Restaurant mantra for 2026?

SINGAPORE – Diners want it, and chefs and restaurant owners contending with diner apathy are happy to provide it.

Whether it is an omakase sushi experience or a perfectly cooked steak with all the trimmings, restaurants are looking to offer that one thing no Singaporean can resist – value for money.

Of course, such establishments have always been in the food scene. But restaurants at all price points have taken a battering in the last two years.

This past year, especially, has been marked by high-profile closures of Michelin-starred restaurants, upscale restaurants, mid-priced restaurants, chain restaurants and even food kiosks. People are saving their strong Singapore dollars to spend overseas, and others are cutting back on spending amid global political and economic uncertainties.

Bright sparks in the restaurant scene in 2025 offer lessons to entrepreneurs wanting to entice diners.

There are those epic queues for pasta at Scarpetta in Amoy Street, which start an hour before opening. Its wares, priced between $17 and $26, fly out of the kitchen.

La Pasta, on the fourth floor of Orchard Towers, manages seven to eight turns a night. That means seven or eight different diners occupy each one of its 14 seats every night the restaurant is open. Diners have one hour to finish their meals. They love the big portions and prices that start at $16.90 so much, they keep showing up.

Then there are the fine-dining restaurants which have gone casual. Case in point: British chef Paul Longworth turned his one-Michelin-starred Rhubarb into Encore by Rhubarb. The new casual vibe has reeled in diners, who fill the place up at both lunch and dinner.

Diners are drawn by his Michelin-level cooking, touches of luxury like French butter with the bread basket, and the value proposition. A three-course set lunch is priced at $48 a person, a four-course set dinner at $88 a person.

Fine but affordable

So in 2026, look for upscale meals priced reasonably; at least for Singapore.

The movement is gathering momentum, with steak restaurants such as Bari Bari Steak, La Vache! and Steak Sudaku, all of which opened in 2025.

Hong Kong brand Bari Bari Steak opened its first overseas restaurant at Tampines One in December 2025. It offers Australian and Japanese steaks cooked medium rare. Diners finish the steaks to their desired doneness at the table, on a hot stone, and help themselves to a free-flow salad bar with greens, rice and desserts.

Its prices are designed to please. Teppan steaks start at $22.90 for a 160g Australian flank steak, and top out at $58 for a 160g Miyazaki wagyu steak with A4/A5 marbling.

Another Hong Kong brand, La Vache!, which takes its name from the French expression for “holy cow”, opened in August 2025 in Gemmill Lane.

Modelled on French steak-frites restaurants, it offers a set menu priced at $68 a person. The centrepiece is a 280g ribeye steak from the United States, aged for 60 days. Diners also get its housemade sauce, unlimited fries and a green salad with walnuts. Its house wine and all desserts are priced at $16 a pop.

Also offering Japanese beef is Steak Sudaku, which opened three restaurants in 2025 – in Killiney Road, at The Concourse in Beach Road and in Boon Tat Street. It is looking to open 10 restaurants here.

The Japanese brand, which calls itself the largest importer of Omi beef in Singapore, says it prices its steaks at one-third of what high-end restaurants charge. Prices start at $18.80 for 100g of diced Omi beef steak. Higher up the scale is A5 Grade Marbled Omi Beef Steak, priced at $39.80 for a 150g steak. The menu also includes Omi Beef Gyukatsu ($42.80).

Affordable luxury has also come for the sushi omakase meal, with new brand Sushidan at Raffles City offering luxe for less.

Omakase prices start at $19.90, and this gets the diner four pieces of nigiri sushi; a negitoro handroll; three seasonal ochokodon, which are cups of rice topped with meat or seafood; seasonal chawanmushi currently with snow crab, ginkgo nut and scallop; and miso soup.

The sushi-ya, which opened in December 2025, has impeccable provenance. Chef Hiroyuki Sato, who started it, used to be head itamae of the highly regarded Sushi Tokami in Tokyo. He went on to open his own restaurant, Hakkoku, also in the city’s Ginza area.

Sushidan is his casual brand, and he chose Singapore for the first overseas restaurant. Expect high-end touches. Like at Hakkoku, some of the nigiri sushi is served with red shari, or sushi rice, flavoured with red vinegar. Heading the operations here is itamae Yusuke Kawana, who has 28 years of experience with Edomae-style sushi. In Singapore, he has worked at high-end sushi-ya such as Sushi Sato in Dempsey Road and Sushi Ayumu at Mandarin Gallery.

As if anticipating the shock from diners here, an Instagram post ahead of its opening lists its prices, followed by “We’re not kidding”.

New headwinds in 2026

New challenges await chefs and restaurant owners. The Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System (RTS) Link is expected to be operational in December 2026 or January 2027.

It will be able to transport up to 10,000 travellers an hour in each direction. Property prices in Johor have already gone up, and so have investment in malls, in anticipation of the flood of visitors from Singapore. It will take just five minutes to travel from Woodlands North MRT station to Johor’s Bukit Chagar station.

Forward-thinking operators would already be gearing up to tackle, head on, the possible exodus across the border. Already, property consultants there are talking about how the RTS is turning Johor into “a satellite town for Singapore”.

This is no time for kidding.