A Vision of Michelin Three-Star Dining After the Pandemic

(Bloomberg) -- Sebastien Lepinoy’s restaurant will survive the era of Covid-19. He just isn’t yet sure what that will mean.

The chef of Les Amis, one of Singapore’s two three-star Michelin restaurants, is planning to reopen once Singapore’s Covid-19 prevention measures ease. About 75% of his diners are locals anyway, he said, so he isn’t as worried as a place might be that relies more heavily on tourists.

“If my Singaporean customer comes and sits with me it should be great, even if the tourists aren’t yet here,” he said in an interview. “I will survive, no need to cut salaries, no need to do a smaller theme, I will run almost like I used to do before.”

After more than two decades of serving fine French food to Singapore’s elite, the restaurant won’t be quick to make big changes. Head chef since 2013, he wants to see how behaviors shift—or stay the same—and plans to wait about three months before figuring out how to adapt.

“At the reopening people will be happy, but that doesn’t mean they want to go to fine dining and spend a lot of money. We don’t know yet,” he said. “Perhaps they will go and enjoy but perhaps also they will say ‘maybe we wait a few months’ for fine dining because our salaries were cut this year, our budget is not like before.”

Lepinoy said he’s also working on how to deal with Covid-19 protocols in a way that will be effective but as unintrusive as possible for customers, noting he’s talking to an Israeli company about thermal devices that can take temperatures. He’s also thinking about how to deal with things like the registration process with identification and phone number that may be needed to reopen, with a clientele that’s used to discretion.

The restaurant came in at number 11 in  Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants for 2020 and won the Gin Mare Art of Hospitality Award. It’s known for dishes like La Noix De Saint-Jacques, which is slow roasted scallop served with condiments and sauce coraline, and La Pomme De Terre Roseval Au Caviar—caviar served on petals of roseval potatoes with condiments and fresh herbs.

Before the pandemic, the six-course tasting menu was SG$460 ($325) per person. A Les Amis customer would have discovered, upon walking into the restaurant, a fine interior of wood and marble, with an occasional touch of a painting or flowers, and chandeliers and white table settings. There’s the bread cart, a la carte selections in addition to the tasting menus, and a fantastic cheese tray. And then there’s the extensive selection of Champagnes, whiskies and other beverages. The wine list has more than 3,000 offerings, with about 85% from France, mainly Burgundy and Bordeaux.

Les Amis itself is known for top-quality French dining—but it’s also part of the larger Les Amis Group that operates in five countries, with 26 outlets in Singapore alone, according to its website. The group’s restaurants include everything from Namnam Noodle Bars in Indonesia to House of Singapura in Yangon, Myanmar, and Singapore’s Indigo Blue Kitchen—with “more expansion plans in the pipeline,” according to its website. 

While Les Amis is closed during the circuit breaker implemented by the Singapore government, it’s still offering take-away and delivery meals like Cold Angel Hair with Caviar, cold angel hair pasta with kombu, caviar and black truffle, along with selections like roast chicken, lamb shoulder, borscht, French onion soup and a Mara des Bois strawberry tart.

“When you go in the restaurant, we must remember, people come also for the service. And when you have takeaway, you have no service,” Lepinoy said. “At the moment you deliver to a home, you don’t know how long after they will eat, you don’t know how the quality will be, if it is cold, you cannot control it.”

He seems to have managed those variables, though, considering the circumstances. A recent delivery from the restaurant arrived in labeled, burgundy bags presented by a polite man in a crisp suit and tie. The details had all been worked out—the packaging was purposeful, with windows in some of the carriers to see the food inside. A few simple instructions helped with the dishes that needed a bit of home preparation.

One thing Les Amis won’t do when it reopens: sacrifice quality for quantity. It’s a lesson Lepinoy says he learned while working under the legendary Joel Robuchon in Hong Kong in 2008, and was asked by the restaurant’s management to do a less expensive meal, a kind of bento box for the French eatery. Even though they were paying less, customers still had the same high expectations for the quality of the food, and many complained, he said.

“It was the worst mistake,” he said. “For the first one or two months it was good because we got more customers but we didn’t do any profit because we just tried to fill up the restaurant” — and its reputation was affected in the long term, he said.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.