How Violet Oon and her children are narrating Singapore’s food story for a new generation

Their first restaurant, Violet Oon’s Kitchen, was a casual eatery along Bukit Timah Road serving Peranakan food with a few Western twists. It wasn’t until 2015, when the National Gallery Singapore invited them to set up a restaurant in its new premises, that the family were able to realise their goal of spotlighting Singapore’s culinary heritage. The historic venue, in what was once City Hall, was the perfect site and particularly meaningful to Oon. As a young music and arts journalist in the early 1970s, she had spent much of her time in the Ministry of Culture offices on the building’s third floor. “That was exciting for me, but also a great responsibility, because how do you interpret national food?” she recalled. “Is it hawker food? Home food? Or restaurant food?” 

The short answer is, of course, all of the above. 

“So I went to learn to make idlis from scratch from Indian housewives. We made chilli crab, because that’s what’s national to us, and then we had fish head curry,” she said. “Food is not only food. We feel a responsibility to it, you know?”