A full house, a dessert tree, and Modern British Cuisine 70 floors above Marina Bay at JAAN by Kirk Westaway
There is a particular kind of hush that falls over a lift as it climbs seventy storeys in under a minute. Ears pop, conversation stalls, and by the time the doors part on the top floor of Swissôtel The Stamford, you’ve already been primed for something dramatic. Jaan by Kirk Westaway, one of Singapore’s most celebrated Michelin-starred restaurants, doesn’t waste that momentum.
On a Tuesday night, a night that by most restaurant logic should have been quiet, even in Singapore, every one of its 35 seats was full at JAAN by Kirk Westaway. That alone tells you something about what this room has built over the past decade.
The History of Jaan by Kirk Westaway: From French Fine Dining to Modern British Icon
Jaan’s history is almost a case study in how a single address can hold multiple identities without losing its soul. The restaurant opened in 2001 as a French fine-dining room, and its name, taken from the ancient Sanskrit word for “bowl”, has quietly outlasted three very different culinary visions.
Taiwanese chef André Chiang took over in 2010 and rebranded it “Jaan par André,” steering it toward nouvelle French artistry before leaving in 2014 to open his own restaurant. Julien Royer, who succeeded him, refined that French sensibility further before departing in 2015 to found Odette, which now holds three Michelin stars of its own.
That departure is really where this story starts. Kirk Westaway, a Devon-born chef who’d been Royer’s sous chef for three and a half years, was handed the reins. He earned the restaurant its first Michelin star within a year, and rather than simply maintaining the French template he’d inherited, he began, slowly, almost apologetically at first introducing British elements.
By July 2018, that had become the entire concept. He’s spoken about how uncomfortable that shift initially felt: for years he’d described the food as “European,” because saying “British” invited jokes about fish and chips and bangers and mash. Now the restaurant carries his name on the door, has two Michelin stars, clearly serves not just British cuisine but a journey through England and Westaway’s life experiences there, and Westaway is chasing a third star.
Fourteenth of July 2026 when I had dinner there fell squarely in the middle of his tenth anniversary year at the helm, ten years, as he’s put it, that don’t feel like a decade but do feel like an achievement.
Chef Kirk Westaway’s Bespoke Crockery and Theatrical Restaurant Design
The word “theatrics” isn’t an exaggeration here, it’s the operating principle. The current room is the product of a three-month renovation completed in late 2022, designed in partnership with hospitality studio greymatters to take guests on what the restaurant calls a “multi-sensorial journey through Devon.”
Cheddar Straw and Goose Mousse
You don’t so much walk into Jaan as move through a sequence of staged reveals: a hallway lined with artwork, a nod to Dartmoor’s hawthorn trees rendered as a sculptural centrepiece with leaves in hand-blown Murano glass, dangling from the ceiling like something between a chandelier and a piece of botanical art.
Those glass leaves aren’t new, either, they’re reconfigured pieces from the restaurant’s original chandelier, which was valued at well over a million dollars when installed some twenty years ago. Old bones, new choreography.
The tableware carries the same intentionality. Westaway personally designs much of the crockery the food arrives on, the scalloped, flower-shaped bowls, the leaf-shaped plates on wrought metal stands, the terrazzo side plates.
It’s not decorative flourish for its own sake; each piece is built around a specific dish. His Charred Leek and Potato Soup, a signature that’s been on the menu in various forms for years, comes in a bespoke vessel designed expressly for it, arriving alongside a rustic dark rye sourdough batard and 2 small flaky, crisp buns, with quenelles of Devonshire butter presented and served tableside with a bunch of dried lemon thyme.
The instruction, more than once, is to drink it straight from the cup rather than spoon it, a small piece of stagecraft that changes how the dish lands. The theatrics are presented in so many ways throughout the 2.5 -3 hour “performance”.
The butter has become something of a cult instagram moment with Westaway developing his very own style of scooping it from large dishes and serving it, another moment of theatre. The pretty bunch of lemon thyme sitting next to the bread is a nod to Westaway’s time working in France, another very personal touch.
The Tasting Menu: A Modern British Fine Dining Experience
The night’s menu moved through the register you’d expect from a chef who describes his style as “modern food cooked classically” and, only half-jokingly,”feminine food,” meaning dishes built to leave you satisfied rather than stuffed.
Dinner opened with a run of gorgeously styled bite sized snacks packed with flavour: an elevated rich, cheddar straw, a goose mousse (a favourite of mine), a miniature fish and chips, and a crab salad, each a compressed, playful reference to something recognisably British rendered in fine-dining degustation scale. It was a fantastic way to begin a fabulous dinner.
The charred leek and potato soup followed with its own sense of performance. Unique cup style dishes with straight edges were brought out and staff poured the soup in from jug-like dishes of the same style — that same comfort-food alchemy, smoke and starch turned velvety with roasted macadamias in tiny pieces for texture and added flavour. It was warm, flavour filled and comfort food.
The bread was presented beautifully – at first I thought it was meat, there was so much of it and the presentation was dramatic, no understatement here, it sat next to an over sized bunch of dried lemon thyme. Slices of warmed dried rustic dark rye sourdough batard and 2 small flaky, crisp buns were on the plate, and staff made quite the performance of stopping out the Devonshire butter which was creamy and delicious and sea salt was also on the table to add. This was a huge hit on the tables around us as well as at ours.
Then came the Violin Courgette which was completely elevated when the waiter walked out with the whole bright green and very twisted, over sized (violin-like) courgette for diners to gaze and gasp over. The dish itself was then presented with glass over top a stunningly designed plate-like dish with bright coloured petal like courgettes in the dish,very pretty and dainty.
Staff were patient and informed, explaining the origins and inspiration behind each dish and ingredient. It gave some insight into the mind of a 2 Michelin star chef and how dishes are created – fascinating.
And a Hen’s Egg course was tasty and intriguing, the latter a technique Jaan has built something of a reputation on, echoing the “egg in an egg” dish that’s followed Westaway through several menu iterations.
The idea was for the egg to be pierced and ooze over the other ingredients to create a delicious and complex dish of multiple flavours. Again the staff were integral in explaining how the dish works and how to get the most out of it. Read about the global challenges of high end restaurants here.
The seafood course was a Line Caught Seabass, a dish Westaway has spoken about with real affection, usually built around a bright green sauce of parsley, onion, potato and stock, each element cooked separately to keep its flavour distinct, and finished table side. The design with gorgeous orange “flowers” and herbs was striking.
Then Kagoshima Wagyu for the main, sourced from Japan’s famed Kagoshima prefecture, where it is celebrated for its extraordinary marbling, melt in the mouth texture and delicate sweetness. The dish was rich and assertive after the vegetable-forward courses that preceded it, with a circular piece of perfectly cooked wagyu in a jus that was rich, tasty and just delicious.
A light Gin & Tonic course, a palate-cleansing sorbet interlude rather than an actual cocktail, in the way tasting menus like to wink at you before dessert was really fun – and fresh. A palette cleanser really is a must after so many flavours, textures and courses. It was brought to life on a trolley next to the table with dry ice and enough drama to ensure we were excited about desserts.
The choice between Strawberry Pie and Chocolate Hazelnut closed things out, the kind of straightforward, well-executed British pudding pairing that’s become the emotional signature of this kitchen. I was a huge fan of the dark chocolate and hazelnut, not too sweet and a solid dark chocolate flavour. Although the strawberry pie was also so very English, and also very pretty.
Wine wasn’t the star here, there were only four small glasses, moving confidently between old and new world without ever feeling like a box-ticking exercise. It opened, fittingly, with Champagne Krug Grande Cuvée 173ème Édition, no small detail, given Kirk Westaway holds the title of Singapore’s first Krug Ambassador.
From there, the whites did the heavy lifting: a delightful flinty, citrus, white peach subtle smoky mineral-driven Château de Tracy Pouilly-Fumé 2023 one of the Loire Valley’s benchmark Sauvignon Blanc producers, arrived alongside the bread course, followed by a richer, more textural Puligny-Montrachet “Les Nosroyes” 2022 from Domaine Thomas-Collardot, a wine produced in tiny quantities (just 1,787 bottles and 50 magnums) that paired beautifully with the seafood course.
The one red of the night, a Los Dominios de Berceo Reserva Rioja, Cosecha 2006, was a genuine surprise: crafted predominantly from Tempranillo, matured for two months in French oak before bottle aging of two decades had softened it into something silky and layered enough to stand up to the Kagoshima wagyu without overpowering it.
An incredible cheese trolley that was visually spectacular even just to admire was brought over, but we were impossibly full, and sad we couldn’t indulge in the best British cheeses on offer, all in the one place. Looked truly awesome.
With dessert, tea and coffee were offered, I had a fresh mint tea, delightful to cleanse and pause after such a decadent meal.
Jaan by Kirk Westaway’s Dessert Tree: The Most Instagrammable Finale in Singapore Fine Dining
Dessert didn’t actually end with the strawberry pie and chocolate hazelnut plates. Once those were cleared, out came the real finale: a sculptural mignardise stand shaped like a miniature tree, its wire branches sprouting the same hand-formed metal leaves as the ceiling installation, rooted in a base of real moss and tiny white flowers.
Each leaf served as its own tiny plate, a pair of glossy strawberry tartlets on one, dark chocolate pralines on another, cocoa-nib-crusted truffles scattered like fallen bark on a third, and two jellied citrus pâte de fruits, each topped with a soft praline centre and a single mint leaf, tucked into the lowest branch.
It’s a properly theatrical way to close a meal: rather than a plate of petit fours arriving as an afterthought, the whole table becomes a tiny landscape, and you find yourself picking sweets off a tree seventy floors above Marina Bay.
It’s a small, well-considered echo of the room itself, decoration and dish refusing to be separated even down to the very last course, and easily one of the most photogenic moments in Singapore’s fine dining scene right now.
Why Jaan by Kirk Westaway Is Still Full on a Tuesday Night
What struck me most wasn’t any single dish, though the goose mousse was a flavour filled mouthful of joy delicately delivered in a compact square bite, but the fact that this was a Tuesday, and every seat was taken.
Fine dining in Singapore has had a rough couple of years; several Michelin-starred rooms have quietly closed. Jaan, celebrating a decade under Westaway this year, is doing the opposite: expanding, with sister restaurants now open in Ho Chi Minh City and Jakarta, while Westaway still works the pass at Jaan five days a week.
At seventy floors up, with the Singapore Flyer lit up in the dark below and a room full of strangers eating from plates the chef designed himself, JAAN by Kirk Westaway doesn’t feel like a restaurant coasting on its view. It feels like one still auditioning for its next star and still brimming with creativity and a lust for more.
