How Singapore’s restaurants are weathering the Covid-19 storm, some better than others

Fine-dining restaurants such as Odette and Mandala Club – host for a pop-up by three-Michelin-star Mirazur – have stayed afloat, but casual ones have suffered

With in-person dining banned again for a month, restaurant owners talk about how they have adapted while others explain why they have had to shut up shop

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Singapore’s high-end restaurants such as Mandala Club (above) are largely weathering restrictions imposed to curb the coronavirus pandemic, but some casual restaurants and food stalls are struggling.

Published: 12:15pm, 11 Jun 2021Updated: 12:52pm, 11 Jun 2021

Last month Mauro Colagreco arrived in Singapore ready to roll up his sleeves for a three-month residency at Mandala Club.

Colagreco is chef of the three-Michelin-star Mirazur in Menton, France, and the stint in Singapore is his first pop-up restaurant outside Europe since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Just as Colagreco and his 12-person team in Singapore were gearing up for the launch of his nature-driven, moon-cycle-aligned Lunar Menus on May 14, the Singapore government called a halt to in-person dining at restaurants for a month from May 16 under what it called a Phase 2 Heightened Alert (P2HA).

By then, close to 9,800 seats had been sold for the Singapore residency of the restaurant that ranked No 1 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for 2019. To cater to the overwhelming requests for the reassignment of reservations, Mirazur’s Singapore pop-up was extended beyond its intended August 11 end date, to September 4.

Mauro Colagreco in his garden in Menton, France. Photo: Matteo Carassale

Despite the setback, the chef remains positive. “I am very happy that we will be able to reopen again to share our love and passion with our guests in Singapore,” he says. “We need to unite and stay together in this unusual world situation, and trust our government to do their best to protect the people.”