Rediscover Odette, one of Singapore’s most laurelled restaurants

Ten years after it first opened, Odette has emerged from a seasonal closure with a complete aesthetic rethink. Chef Julien Royer has reunited with Sacha Leong – who designed the original space while he was at Universal Design Studio – to reimagine the restaurant housed within the National Gallery’s former Supreme Court building. Leong, now co-principal of Nice Projects (the London and Sydney studio he founded with Simone McEwan), has moved the interiors away from the original’s pastel softness toward warmer tones, creamy neutrals and amber tones that are played against timber in shades of pale grey-beige and cherry.

Wallpaper* dines at Odette, Singapore

The mood: quietly luxe

The original silhouette of curved screens remains, now reimagined in intricate timber marquetry that recalls art deco cabinetry and echoes the building’s 1930s architecture. A new faux skylight crowns the dining room with diffused overhead illumination. Glass and brass table bases add a contemporary edge, and even the tablecloths have been cropped shorter for a less formal effect. Mohair velvet armchairs embrace diners as snugly as the custom banquettes. At the entrance, multidisciplinary artist Dawn Ng’s suspended paper sculptures – their hues drawn from Royer’s seasonal ingredients – establish the mood; two additional works by Ng animate the private dining room.

Materials have grown more tactile. Cast mirrored glass panels create soft reflections along the walls, and Michael Anastassiades brass pendants drop above each table, whilst a central marble-topped wine station anchors the room. In other words, everything feels assured and grown up in a dining room swathed in craftsmanship.

The food: evolved restraint

The spatial evolution mirrors shifts in Royer’s cooking. His menu still celebrates European provenance – John Vallance’s Scottish seafood, Les Moulins d’Antoine’s Auvergne flour, Tartufi Mora’s Alba truffles – but, like the decor, the mood is lighter and fresher. Bafun uni arrives atop brown-butter-brushed French toast, while emulsions riff cheekily on Singaporean chilli crab. The vegetarian menu offers edible spring gardens topped with radish ice cream, with the star billing seized by an onion millefeuille, its rings taken apart, layered with truffle and then reassembled, and finished with yellow wine jus from the Jura. Classic signatures like the Kampot pepper-crusted pigeon remain, but the overall effect feels less rigid, more evolved.

And the service? It’s still impeccably polished and unhurried, the senior French staff orchestrating deftly paced lunches that routinely stretch to four hours without ever feeling interminable. It’s a confident maturation for a restaurant that no longer needs to prove anything, choosing, instead, to deepen what it has been doing exceptionally well for a decade.

Odette is located at 1 St Andrew's Rd, #01-04 National Gallery, Singapore 178957