‘I thought bak kut teh bubble tea was genius’: How Labyrinth survived 10 years in Singapore’s tough restaurant scene

Back in 2013, I went to a one-night-only pop-up at a Boat Quay restaurant. All I knew was that dinner would be cooked by some guy who was a banker, but also an aspiring chef.

We were young and at the time, there were probably only a couple of Singaporean chefs doing multi-course meals that were kind of fancy. The first course was squid ink paella shaped to look like sushi and topped with seafood. The second was crispy Asian-style roasted pork belly, with risotto. And for dessert, a cheese ice cream with chewy fruit leather that I still think about fondly. The pop-up was a success.

A year later, the banker quit his day job and opened a restaurant.

Many awards, accolades and Michelin stars later, Labyrinth celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

From an initial low-budget setup in Neil Road with barely functioning secondhand equipment to a plush restaurant at the Esplanade Mall that has retained its Michelin star for eight years running, chef Han Liguang, 39, has had his share of struggles in getting to this 10-year milestone.

He’s had low points where the business was failing and he only had S$5,000 left in his bank account, and people said, “‘My grandma cooks better than you’.”

He’s also had high points, like flying the flag for Singapore cuisine on the world stage, and earning the Highest Climber award at last year’s Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants ceremony.

A 10-year anniversary is no mean feat in Singapore’s tough fine dining climate, surviving the fickleness of diners overwhelmed by choice, rental market fluctuations and even the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Being around for 10 years means that people actually appreciate what we do,” Han said. “Every restaurant has detractors as well, but, at least we have done something good for Singapore. I do a lot of events overseas, to showcase what Singapore food is about. That's why we go deep into researching Singapore history and heritage flavours, to be truly authentic.”

It’s something his younger self would never have foreseen. “I never really knew what I wanted until I came to this life,” he mused. “To be honest, when I changed my career, I always told myself, ‘Maybe the restaurant will close down after three years, and I’ll go back to being a banker.’ Get the monkey off the back, right? Scratch the itch.

“It’s been 10 years and there’s no turning back.”

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

“Back then, painting the plate with smudges and smears of sauce” was all the rage, he recalled with a roar of laughter when I reminded him of his first rodeo all those years ago. “It was me alone in the kitchen, cooking for 40 or 50 people. I rented the restaurant for the night. I didn’t charge a lot, I remember – just enough to cover costs.”

He did it because he was toying with the idea of a career switch, which would mean leaving his cushy finance job and going into an industry known for its long hours, physical punishment and low monetary rewards. Everyone told him not to do it.

It was his dad who gave him some solid advice, despite being against the idea. “My father told me, ‘Don’t just open a restaurant. Test yourself to see if you really want to do it. Start by doing a bunch of pop-ups and private dinners first, and see whether you actually enjoy doing it every week, and then use the market response of your diners to gauge how strong you are. Friends will tell you that your food is good. You need more objective feedback.'”

He did private dinners at home, “before private dining even became a thing. I said, ‘Pay whatever you want. What is this meal worth?’ That’s how I started shaping my philosophy towards, ‘What are you worth?’ and not, ‘What is your ingredient worth?’.” They paid “anywhere between S$50 and S$98. I took the median. I opened at S$70 for five courses."

He added: "It's a business method. You can't open and leave it to chance. You've got to get enough of a sample population to have data. To make sure you have the best chance of succeeding.”

He’d earned a degree in accounting and finance at the London School of Economics primarily because both his parents were accountants, and he went on to land high-profile jobs at multinational banks. But during his time in university, he’d started baking – “cookies; bread and butter pudding” – to impress girls. “I ended up liking cooking more than I liked girls.”

And, while he was working in the finance industry, "I was staging in restaurants for free on weekends, cleaning their floors and wiping their fridges. I was also baking and selling macarons from home at S$1 each using a small oven that could only bake one tray at a time. 120 macarons would take me 12 hours to bake. Once, I made 200 macarons for a friend’s wedding. I almost cried. My mum saw me baking at 2am and came to help me.”

Along with some friends who “bootstrapped” him, he opened Labyrinth in Neil Road. “My dad didn’t want me to do it. He said, ‘Why the hell did I pay so much for your education overseas when I could just have given you the money to open a damn restaurant at the start? Find your own money!’”

He made it work with S$180,000. “People are opening restaurants now with a S$5 million budget. We had to work within our means. I didn’t buy any fancy equipment."

He added: "My combi oven was a 12-year-old secondhand combi oven that sounded like one. My gas stove was recycled from the previous tenant. My ice machine could barely make any ice. My appliances were domestic brands that burned out every month. We couldn’t afford a Thermomix, Vitamix, whatever. We couldn’t afford staff, so I made it open-concept and served customers myself, over the counter.”

He poured so much time and energy into the restaurant that when his grandfather, who had run a steakhouse and was one of his inspirations, died, “I was in the restaurant for service. I was devastated. My father told me, ‘Your granddad would have wanted you to be at the restaurant. He knew how hard it is.’”

He had apprenticed at Italian restaurant Garibaldi, and he was interested in molecular gastronomy “because it was all the rage” and he was a fan of Heston Blumenthal's. So, the first menu was “a hybrid of Italian and Singaporean inspired dishes”. Chilli crab ice cream, served with soft-shell crab, as well as a chendol xiaolongbao became standout dishes that earned his cuisine a “modern Singaporean” label.

EVOLVING EXPLORATIONS OF “SINGAPORE” CUISINE

One of the reasons for Labyrinth’s enduring success is the fact that since then, it’s been constantly evolving, Han said.

“We first launched as a modern Singaporean restaurant, a bit more molecular, quirky, maybe a bit contrived to some, maybe creative to some. Then, we moved into sustainability and local sourcing, and we were the first to do that before the government got involved."

He added: "Sustainability evolved to also being about cultural sustainability, about preserving it, which is our current iteration. It’s what I see as going down the path of heritage and preserving history for the next generation, so that people in the future will know the roots of where they came from and what makes us who we are.”

Dishes on the current menu delve into forgotten history and dying hawker techniques, with unique contemporary inflections. Like Wartime Rojak, based on a recipe he found in a cookbook of 1940s dishes; and a char kway teow dish in which the noodles are fashioned out of fish maw, made with input from Chinatown hawkers.

There have been dishes he regrets. “We did a bak kut teh bubble tea in 2014.” He shook his head. “Terrible dish. Served cold, with pearls made of soy sauce, and pork stock reduction. We served it in a bubble tea cup with a straw. I thought it was genius. I still think it’s genius! It was a disaster," he said. 

"In the words of one of my regulars, ‘It tasted like bak kut teh soup you’d kept in the fridge and were too lazy to reheat.' And that’s when I realised that actually, that’s what it was. It was only on the menu for one week, because it was that bad.”

But, the bak kut teh dish on the current menu, a meatless soup with aged tangerine peel, crushed sansho pepper and red Kampot pepper oil, is so good, I had to interject.

“We went from whacko experiments to cooking it properly, refining the flavour” and incorporating new technology, he said.

“Can Singaporean food be refined? I will say yes, but not in the European manner. Where we found refinement was in recipes from 70, 80 years ago. Grandma would spend the whole day cooking, she’d stir the pot for very long time, add in herb by herb, over slow heat. That’s called layering of flavours. And that creates refinement. These days, to save time, people put everything in at once. So, the refinement of Singapore cuisine actually lies in its history, not in the future.”

Speaking of learning from the past, “There wouldn’t be this bak kut teh soup without the bak kut teh bubble tea, which piqued my interest in bak kut teh in the first place. Every failure in the past shapes us to be who we are the in the present. And I appreciate the failures more than I appreciate success, because we don't learn anything from being successful. Of course, don’t fail all the time, lah. Be sensible about it.”

One of the things that preoccupies him these days is learning specialised techniques from local hawkers. “I really started developing respect for the hawkers,” he said. “There's a lot of hard work being put into every single dish we eat in a hawker stall that only charges S$4 to S$5 for a plate, maybe S$2 even. And I want to make sure that all the hard work, techniques and knowledge is not lost, and actually properly recognised on the global stage.

“It's really a slow, unconscious, natural romance that developed between me and Singapore food, and being a Singaporean.”

GOING BEYOND FOOD

Being a chef is one thing; running a successful business is another. “I would say I'm 51 per cent a business person and 49 per cent a chef. Of course, I would like to be 100 per cent chef, but Labyrinth wouldn't exist anymore if I was,” Han said.

“Most chefs just want to cook the best food and serve the best dishes. Many chefs like to cook for themselves. Many don’t realise that it is a business. I mean, this year, restaurants are not doing so well. The question ultimately is, ‘How many chefs understand how US federal rate cuts could affect Singapore, how the Singapore dollar is tied to a basket of currency, how the Monetary Authority of Singapore functions when it comes to fiscal and monetary policies?’ And, ‘How do you understand the rental market?' It's really about understanding how business works on both sides, and to bring a convincing argument or debate across, to find a solution that benefits all parties. And that's also led to longevity – keeping your costs reasonable.”

But, that’s a realisation he took time to come to. “We weren't even doing well for the first three years financially, and I had had to be whipped into shape by my partners to take a keener interest in the business side of things,” he said.

The lowest point came in 2016. “We were doing something different. There was a lot of pushback because the restaurant scene was not as evolved as it is right now. Finances were not good. I put money in, it kept disappearing. That was the time I was not really mindful of the business aspect. I was told to wind down the business with only S$10,000 left in the bank.”

But, “Even when we lost money, I still paid my staff bonuses. My dad was shocked. ‘Which loss-making business pays out bonuses?’ I said, ‘The failure of the business is my fault as the owner. The staff still showed up to cook every single day. How can they be faulted for my failures?’

“It was not easy to live, to be honest. I went through a breakup and I was alone… My then-girlfriend had said, ‘How can I date someone with less than S$5,000 in his bank account?’ after peeping at my account statement on an ATM machine.” He chuckled.

“My right-hand man in business and I had a bit of a falling out. I was left to hold up the entire business on my own, trying to save it. Emotionally, you're about to lose everything – your dream, your passion, your life, your savings, your hard work.”

What caused the winds to change? “The Michelin star in 2017. Michelin came and it rescued the business. People were interested in us again. It doubled our sales almost overnight. I always appreciate the awards, I don’t take them for granted. We were that close to going under. I always say the difference between success and failure is just a fine line.”

Looking ahead to the next 10 years, he said, his mission is to give young chefs the opportunities he himself had, and to go deeper with them into Singapore’s heritage recipes.

He’s also busy with his casual fried chicken brand, Har Har Chicken, which is about to open its newest outlet at Ion Orchard. It’s “so that I can drive myself nuts again and go through what I went through 10 years ago,” he quipped.

Surveying where he is now, it’s a little surreal. “Here I am, a Singaporean boy born in Singapore, cooking a cuisine that Singapore doesn't know how to define – I don’t know how to define it – and having chefs from around the world tasting it, asking questions about it.”

He recalled the time in 2014 that he attended an Asia’s 50 Best ceremony for the first time, held in Singapore, as an observer. “I asked myself, ‘Why are there no Singaporean chefs on stage?’ I told myself, just a few months into opening my restaurant, ‘I want to be there one day. I want a Singaporean to be on stage representing Singapore food in Asia, in the world, one day.’”

Nine years later, in 2023, when the Asia’s 50 Best awards were held in Singapore once again, “We won the Highest Climber award. I got to go on stage. When I left my seat, I felt like a part of me was still in the seat, looking at the stage. And I did my part. I did what I set out to do for Singapore. I wanted a Singaporean on stage, doing Singapore food, being recognised by a global panel and foodies and chefs. That was probably my proudest moment."

Labyrinth is at Esplanade Mall #02-23, 8 Raffles Avenue, Singapore 039802.