Restaurant Zen Reopens With a Counter-First Shophouse and a Singapore Team at the Pass

Restaurant Zen closes its doors for three months at a time only when the whole shophouse needs rethinking. The three-Michelin-star Nordic room on Bukit Pasoh Road shut on June 2 and reopens Tuesday, August 25, with a ground-floor counter that now anchors the night instead of a colorful lobby sofa. Bjorn Frantzen, the Stockholm chef whose Frantzen Group also runs three-star Restaurant Frantzen and FZN in Dubai, will be in town for the opening. The cooking still reads Nordic and Japanese. The flow through the building is what changed.

Sixteen seats sit at a dark limestone counter on the first floor, where chefs serve seven canapés before anyone climbs to the second-storey dining room for six main courses. That is a longer prelude than the old room offered, and it puts the pass at the start of the meal rather than halfway through the journey. The second floor keeps a woody, low-lit dining room with tableside plating under standing lamps and a chandelier built from Ann Wolff’s Snowball candle holders for Kosta Boda. Desserts, petits fours, and digestifs finish on the third floor, in the lounge or the adjoining Glasshouse. Joyn, the Stockholm interior studio that worked on Frantzen in Sweden, reshaped the movement through those floors with brown, bronze, and biscuit tones, Kit Kat tiles, fermentation jars, and Scandinavian art chosen by the group.

Frantzen opened Zen in November 2018 in the former André space, importing the three-floor choreography of his Stockholm flagship into a heritage shophouse. The restaurant earned two Michelin stars within ten months and a third in 2021, then held all three through the 2026 Singapore ceremony in early August. When FZN took its third star in Dubai in 2024, Frantzen became the only chef running three three-star restaurants at once. Zen’s lunch menu runs SGD 450++ and dinner SGD 620++, with sake-and-wine pairings adding SGD 250++ at lunch and SGD 350++ at dinner. Reservations for each month drop on the first at 10 a.m. Singapore time. September is already on the books.

The refreshed menu stays within that frame. Shima aji arrives as crudo with artichoke bariguole, quince, and nasturtium. Chawanmushi holds abalone, coriander, shiitake, and beef broth. Wagyu comes with oxtail presse, morel, and fermented Kampot pepper. Produce from Japan lands four times a week, with full menu turns three or four times a year. Frantzen told The Straits Times the food will still be recognizable to anyone who ate here before the closure. The room around it is tighter and more counter-forward than the version that closed in June.

What may matter longer in Singapore is who is cooking. Head chef Kelvin Ng, general manager Rachel Ezekiel, and head of beverage Warren Estrop, all Singaporeans, now lead the room together, a rare arrangement at this tier. Ng trained at the Culinary Institute of America in Singapore and cooked at the two-Michelin-starred Modern in New York before returning to Zen as senior sous chef in 2024 and chef de cuisine in September 2025. Ezekiel moved up to general manager after four years in the dining room. Estrop, previously at Meta and Saint Pierre, runs drinks for Zen and Brasserie Astoria. Co-executive chefs Toraik Chua and Martin Ofner left in 2025 and early 2026. The group has not named a replacement executive chef. Emmah Stromberg from Restaurant Frantzen in Stockholm joins as sous chef in October.

Frantzen Group has plenty else on the calendar, from Beach Club Astoria in Marbella, which opened August 12, to Brasserie Astoria and Én by Bjorn Frantzen in Australia in 2027. Tuesday in Bukit Pasoh is about the shophouse itself. Zen opens for lunch from noon to 5 p.m. and for dinner from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m., Tuesdays through Saturdays, with the first seats at a counter that did not exist when the restaurant debuted seven years ago.