Arts
Singapore gets a taste of ‘Kotuwa’
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Chef Rishi & Manuela
Already making a name for himself with two popular restaurants, Cheek Bistro and Cloudstreet, Lankan Michelin star chef Rishi Naleendra introduces Lankan fare to Singapore’s culinary melting pot
Launching a Sri Lankan restaurant in Singapore was never in Rishi Naleendra’s grand plan. The soft-spoken Sri Lankan chef had the distinction of a Michelin star for his Cheek Bistro and also helmed the hugely popular restaurant Cloudstreet. It was only occasional forays to a hawker stall to satisfy his curry cravings that prompted him to lay on a Sri Lankan feast for private dinners, this too for charity efforts back home. That guests loved the food there was no question. Before he knew it, the idea was taking shape in others’ minds if not his own. Property tycoon Ashish Manchharam, who incidentally is married to a Sri Lankan Parsi, having a boutique hotel venue in mind broached it over coffee and Rishi’s Singaporean investor LohLik Peng’s spontaneous enthusiasm had Rishi persuaded.
The concept was all Rishi’s and as he mulled over names, dismissing the too cliched (‘so many restaurants in the world with Colombo’) he thought of Fort, Colombo’s commercial hub, a place everyone was familiar with. Writing it in Sinhala and Tamil, Peng it was who suggested he should go with ‘Kotuwa’.
Still it was a challenge. Sri Lankan food had never really figured in Singapore’s culinary melting pot, nor was it a Rishi speciality – in fact he had successfully avoided being typecast as a chef who could only excel in his own home cuisine. The prestigious Michelin star, the ultimate accolade for chefs, was first earned in 2017 for his distinctive take on contemporary Australian food at his restaurant Cheek by Jowl and then in its new iteration as Cheek Bistro in 2019.Yet there was no denying the food from home has always been close to his heart.
Kotuwa Crab Set
As always he started out by drawing up a comprehensive business plan, mapping it all out in his mind. Then came a food exploration trip with his then sous chef at Cheek, Alan Chan and friends, savouring fine dining restaurants, also kades and eating places for ordinary folk in Pettah, Aluthkade, and down south. So Kotuwa’s menu is a celebration of all that is so traditionally loved by Lankans from the hoppers to the pol/seenisambols, to pickles and achcharus, lamprais, black pork curry, devilled chicken, hot butter cuttlefish and even that childhood special – chocolate biscuit pudding, if given a fancier twist!
Wanderlust, a finely renovated heritage building in Singapore’s Little India was the perfect home for ‘Kotuwa’ and they were right on course for a well planned April 2020 launch. Then COVID happened. Facing a very imminent lockdown in four days, Rishi and his team “a little shattered” went into crisis mode. Cloudstreet’s menu they knew would not translate to takeaway but could they do Lankan? Thus was Kotuwa launched as a takeaway platform from Cloudstreet’s kitchen.
Always one for the fine detail, Rishi realised branding was vital. That was delivered through the distinctive packaging, labels, stickers and bags and to their delight and relief, the food and the name were a hit. They had orders rolling in faster than the crashing surf at Arugam Bay.
Kotuwa Kottu Roti
Kotuwa opened as a full service restaurant in December once Singapore’s strict COVID curbs had eased and Rishi is well pleased with the response. They’ve been booked right through and if he initially felt it was the novelty of a new entrant, four months after he reflects that there are customers who have come back more than a dozen times. The Lankan chef couldn’t come over but Alan Chan has filled the void amazingly and it’s all about quality, he feels; true you can get a curry from a hawker centre for S$4-5 while here you are paying in the range of 20. It’s the ingredients, the quality produce that make the difference. And yet, he accepts those who grouse that a particular dish is not as good as their mum’s with good grace.
“You’ll never get food like your mum’s,” he agrees and he’s talking from experience for his mother Sepali was always cooking for her three boys – Sashi, Rishi and Sachitra who he says ‘ate a lot’. In fact, he turned to her for some of her cherished recipes for ‘Kotuwa’. His parents Ravi and Sepali had run a catering business from their home in Dehiwala but growing up Rishi had no thoughts whatsoever of taking the same path. Adventurous when it came to his food choices, he could never stomach chilli and “Mum had to wash the piece of chicken,” before he could eat it. His Australian wife Manuela, though eats like a Sri Lankan, he laughs.
As a youngster, he was a little geeky, he says, absorbed in books and movies. School was Mahanama College and coming from a Sinhala speaking home, he was resolved to learn English. His mother would let him buy any book he wanted and that love for books, has stayed with him -there are boxes and boxes full he has left with Manuela’s parents in Australia. He would enjoy browsing at the British Council library, also at the Barefoot bookshop and Paradise Road, fascinated by the books on architecture, Bawa in particular. Not surprisingly he chose architecture for his higher studies in Melbourne.
But as fate would have it, he opted to switch to the hospitality industry, while working a part-time job in a restaurant, drawn by the vibrant energy of the kitchen, and the reality that it was a much faster pathway to a permanent residency in Australia. Once started he was hooked and stints at sought after restaurants like Tetsuya’s run by Japanese wiz Tetsuya Wakuda, Brent Savage’s Sydney restaurant Yellow and Melbourne’s Taxi Kitchen wouldunleash his creativity and hone his skills.
Chef Rishi
Now happily established in Singapore, he has a close-knit team of like-minded professionals running his three restaurants. Manuela is a full partner in Rishi’s ventures. If Rishi is the creative genius, she is ‘the structural one’ and ‘thankfully also a workaholic,’ he says, talking of the early days at Cheek by Jowl when they would be at the restaurant till 3 a.m. and then return by 8 in the morning. But it all paid off when the restaurant was awarded a coveted Michelin star, a significant accolade for a newcomer in Singapore’s competitive food scene.
He is proud too of Cloudstreet, for him ‘a totally creative space’. Here just 26 guests can linger over a fine-dining experience of a seven-course dinner, with maybe 26 different dishes all carefully paired with curated wines and other beverages.
He says candidly that he is very ambitious. It took courage and commitment to make it to where he is today, girded by sheer hard work. “The harder you work the luckier you get.” But he’s always one to dream big. “I live thinking I don’t have much to lose – it’s a very fine balance of taking something really really serious and not taking it serious. I get very excited about things but I also know how to balance it.” Having the vision is important, he says, but you need to understand how much hard work goes into it while being mindful of the complexities of the bigger elements. Earlier on, at Maca (his first Singapore project) the Restaurant Manager would have to drag him out to talk to guests but now Rishi makes it a point to stop by every single table.
COVID has paused his regular visits to Sri Lanka. He laughs that he always flies SriLankan because he loves the kiribath and fish curry they serve and knows when he sees the fridges and washing machines coming through Customs, that he’s home! But there is a deep desire to share his success. Long before he started Kotuwa, he donated S$11,000 to flood victims (from his private dinners) and two years ago, he gave some 1,400 cookbooks to the Dilmah cooking school so student chefs would have enough resources to draw from. Learning English is imperative for any young person so there would be no bounds to their voyage of discovery, he believes. This is a little known side of Rishi – his constant quest to learn not just about his field but the wider world – art, music and film, anything creative. For now he’s probing to see if there are connections between Lankan food and Singapore’s Peranakan cuisine.
In his book, it’s the passion you bring to your work that matters. “It’s mainly Singaporeans at ‘Kotuwa’ (cooking Sri Lankan food) but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter where you are from – you cook with your heart and it turns out well.”
While there seem no boundaries to his passion and where he will take it, long term, he muses that he would still want to live in Sri Lanka at some point- and hopefully have a restaurant, something akin to the level of Cloudstreet.