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‘It reminds me of Sri Lanka’: Inside Michelin-starred chef Rishi Naleendra’s Singapore home

Having lived in several different countries, the chef behind two-Michelin-starred Cloudstreet and Sri Lankan restaurant Kotuwa finds a sense of home in work, nature, creative self-expression – and being a master of Carousell.

‘It reminds me of Sri Lanka’: Inside Michelin-starred chef Rishi Naleendra’s Singapore home

Cloudstreet's chef Rishi Naleendra at home with his dog, Hendrix. (Photo: CNA/Dillon Tan)

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Having lived in a range of local housing types, from a modern condominium to an HDB flat in Hong Lim Complex to a Tiong Bahru walk-up, chef Rishi Naleendra has found “the only place I want to live” in “as long as I’m in Singapore”.

The chef behind two-Michelin-starred Cloudstreet, casual wine bar Fool and Sri Lankan restaurant Kotuwa, who was born in Sri Lanka and studied and worked in Australia, has called Singapore home for the last 10 years, but only recently moved into his favourite space yet. And, it comes with built-in local history.

(Photo: CNA/Dillon Tan)

Home for him, his wife Manuela Toniolo and their golden retriever, Hendrix, is a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a heritage black-and-white property in the Henderson area, which he rents from the Singapore Land Authority. Isolated and surrounded by lush jungle, yet just a few minutes’ drive from his restaurants in town, Naleendra believes it was originally built to house officers of the British army.

Serendipitously, he’d visited the house when a friend of his used to live in it. When the friend moved out, the apartment was up for bidding, and he landed his ideal home, recounted the former student of architecture and fan of iconic Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa.

Naleendra loves "vintage and quirky" things. (Photo: CNA/Dillon Tan)

While Cloudstreet, situated in one of Amoy Street’s 1800s shophouses, is replete with lush decor and ornate old-world touches, he’s kept his home, with its clean white walls and undressed windows letting the outside in, a much more calming space, although no less eclectic.

Most of the furnishings, both in the restaurant and at home, are preloved finds as Naleendra is “drawn to things with history and a story”. “Even when I don’t need anything, I like to look on Carousell, especially for vintage and quirky furniture. Manuela doesn’t always approve, but I always buy them and then ask for permission later,” he quipped.

"In Sri Lanka, we love our four-poster beds," Naleendra said.

The four-poster bed in the master bedroom, for example, was a S$350 Facebook Marketplace find. So is the carved-wood, glass-topped coffee table in the living room whose previous owners had brought it back from Bangalore 30 years ago, which comes with a funny story: “Usually, I always bargain, but before I started, they said, ‘I think I know you’, and ended up being one of my regular customers. All I had to do was cook them dinner and they gave me the coffee table for free.”

Another of his favourite sources is secondhand furniture retailer Hock Siong. Many decor items from this store have found homes at Cloudstreet, while his home features pieces like armchairs made in Italy in the 60s: “There are only four screws. Everything else is put together with wood – there are little wood clips holding everything together. Things like that interest me quite a lot.”

(Photo: CNA/Dillon Tan)

He particularly loves the quirks of the house, such as a freestanding washbasin in a corner of the guest bedroom by the window. “Back in the day when they built houses, it was normal to have a sink in your room, not inside the bathroom. We’ve kept it and I really, really like it.”

Taxi drivers sometimes ask if living there is spooky, and “some people might think it has ghosts because it's so old, but it's nice to live in a space that's not cookie-cutter”, he chuckled (no, he hasn't encountered any apparitions). “I’m a huge believer in fengshui, and you feel that energy; the circulation of air. It’s so nice to have the windows open and so much space, especially when you look outside.”

(Photo: CNA/Dillon Tan)

High ceilings, a cavernous kitchen and green surroundings were other factors that drew him to the house. “It’s open, you can breathe here, the walls are really thick so you don’t hear the neighbours even when it’s fully open, and it’s not hot. This is one of the coolest places we’ve lived in.”

But, “The nature is the biggest reason we moved here. We love being in the jungle, and wildlife. It really reminds me of living in Sri Lanka. I imagine this is how Singapore would have been before all the big buildings came in.”

(Photo: CNA/Dillon Tan)

From the balcony, where he starts each morning by brewing Chinese tea, he can birdwatch. “We get many laughingthrush; I’ve even seen racket-tailed drongos; there are common kingfishers, and sometimes you see a white-collared kingfisher as well, or a black-naped oriole.”

Other creatures make cameo appearances, too: “Occasionally, a snake; you get a mongoose or monitor lizard every now and then, and monkeys every now and then. And, we have resident chickens.” He quipped: “It’s a co-living space. Everyone’s welcome.” While there aren’t any of the rats or roaches you find in the city, there are sometimes bees in the house, and “we had a little scorpion once. It was quite cute. I googled it and it was harmless.”

Adorning the walls of the house are works of art by Sri Lankan artists like Prageeth Manohansa, Anoli Perera and Pala Pothupitiye, as well as Thai artist Surasak Buddhanuwt, discovered randomly in Bangkok.

Naleendra himself also paints. “Usually, it’s at night, when I come home from work. I start 9.30pm or 10pm and I could go on until 5am, then sleep for a bit, and then wake up and finish the painting, because you see things a lot better during the day.”

He has been painting as a hobby for most of his life – a painting of his pet chickens, done in the style of Picasso when he was 14, hangs in the kitchen – but it was during the pandemic that he started developing his own style and painting larger works. Many are based on Buddhist lore. “It’s not religiously motivated, but I think you always find really inspiring stories, especially when you look into Buddhism.”

He mused: “A lot of the time, people don’t like heavy or dark art, but I’ve always found the beauty in dark and heavy images, even when it comes to photography as well. Sometimes, you paint something really heavy and you feel like you’ve run a marathon. Painting is not relaxing – it’s actually really intense. But, once you finish it, you feel really, really good.”

Painting is “a really good reminder of why you never should stop doing things, and why you never should say, ‘This is good, I'm done.’ I started during COVID-19, and then I sort of didn't stop. It has been four and a half years, and I can see how much it has improved. When I'm 55 or 60, I might be able to paint properly.”

There are parallels to be drawn between his journey as a painter and his journey as a chef.

Rishi Naleendra is chef-owner of Cloudstreet, where he serves menus inspired by personal philosophies and the best ingredients. (Photo: CNA/Dillon Tan)

“I didn't come to Singapore as a big-name chef – no one knew me. I didn't even have a job. I didn't even have a place to stay. Everything, I worked towards,” he mused.

And, even each dish served to guests “is probably one out of 1,000 attempts that we tried to create something. Imagine trying to do something, and failing and failing and failing failing, and then all of a sudden, you get one idea that feels really nice. It’s the same with painting. Halfway through, you’re just like, ‘No, this is not getting anywhere. I hate it.’ And you really want to stop. Then you just push through and you get a result that you like.”

Having a restaurant like Cloudstreet gives him the opportunity to enjoy two homes with two different decor styles, so to speak. “I get to have things I love, especially at the restaurant, where you naturally have to have furniture and decor. In my conversation with the designers, I said, ‘I’ve been living everywhere and I do not have a home, and my work is always my home – my home will always be where my work is.”

Cloudstreet, named after Australian writer Tim Winton’s 1991 novel about a house of the same name in which two families live, was designed to give guests a feeling of high energy, besides being an extension of his style. “I wanted different areas of the restaurant to feel different and still have a homely feeling, because when you go to people’s houses, they are never the same. You have things you collect over the years without thinking, ’Is it going to fit my home in 15 years?’”

As in his home, the building's original features inspire the furnishings. In the main dining room, checkerboard floor tiles and green-glazed breeze blocks give the restaurant the feel of “old houses in Singapore”, while in the lounge area upstairs, “we've kept the original flow, and picked old-school furniture because these places used to be opium dens”. Animals carved out of brass and stone, which he selected based on their whimsical nature, lend a quirky, eclectic vibe.

His vibrant workplace provides contrast and balance to his home, a place of relaxation.

(Photo: CNA/Dillon Tan)

“Every night, we put on a show (for diners) and you need to have that energy; you need to feel nervous. When I go home, I still want it to be really, really good energy, but a lot more calming… like it’s a holiday. It starts with a calming feeling in the morning, having tea in the balcony, and then I end the night by playing a record and just chilling.”

He continued, “I think being content is the most important thing right now for me. I’m very, very lucky to do something that I love so it doesn’t really feel like work, most of the days.” Of course, “There’s so much pressure, especially being in F&B, and I enjoy that part as well because it keeps you going – but when I get home, it’s completely the opposite and I get a full-on opportunity to just switch off.”

Source: CNA/my
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