After more than three decades honing his skills in fine dining, Singaporean chef Edward Voon decided last year to dive head first into something completely new and unfamiliar, opening his eponymous bistro VOON in Kennedy Town. “À -la-carte,” he laughs. “This word, à -la-carte, oh my god, it’s an alien. I haven’t been doing à-la-carte for almost 32 years, so coming back to this world? All hell broke loose.” 

At the opening last summer, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the chef and talking to him about the change in direction. He told me at the time that VOON, as you may guess just from the name itself, is an exploration of his own identity, not simply as a chef, but also as someone with Southeast Asian heritage. The bistro was a place where Voon could find his true identity while reconsidering what it is that he wants his diners to experience and learn through his menu. So 12 months on, how has this journey been for the chef?

“It’s been a very stressful year, going through this transition and trying to understand people a little bit more, people from all walks of life,” he tells me candidly. “Many of them come in here without knowing my background, so catering to them has been a learning curve. Kennedy Town has a very different crowd, and their palate and their expectations are very different. People come in for quick meals, and it’s up to our service staff to explain to them the thought process and the effort we put into each dish.”

And what exactly is that thought process? Voon tells me his mission here is to marry the authentic, traditional delicacies of Southeast Asia with his culinary training and vision, elevating these dishes whilst honouring their roots. He gives me the example of his pork chop rice, which taps into other flavours coming from ingredients you wouldn't usually find in the humble dish, such as chorizo and sambal. 

“When you ask people here about Southeast Asian food, they always think about Thai food. Vietnamese food is slowly becoming more popular now, but they never mention Singapore, or Laos, or Myanmar. So to me, people have always misunderstood this word – it’s quite alien. What I want is for more people to understand these cuisines, or at least take the time and give it a chance.”

Diners aside, by building VOON from scratch, the chef has also had to recruit a brand new team of chefs and service staff, many of whom do not share the same kind of background and training as himself. The experience was daunting at first, but over time, he’s managed to slow himself down and adopt a more constructive approach. He says it’s given him a new perspective at this stage of both his life and his career.

“There’s an end product – a vision – that I’m very much trying to achieve, and I’ve been training my current staff, but some of them are still struggling with me,” he admits. “They’ve never been through this kind of momentum before, and it requires a lot of patience and a lot of explanation to make them understand. These guys come from a rougher background, and they have spent their entire lives in a kitchen with just one saute pan and they fry everything. But over the months, you see them change and develop a new understanding of cooking, and it’s really rewarding to see. They realise that actually, food can be like this – it can be better.

“They also become more appreciative of being a chef. It’s something to be proud of,” he adds. “When they reach a certain age, I want them to have developed a set of certain skills through me that can progress their careers in the future. Some habits they have are very difficult to change, but I never give up on them, because these boys have good hearts. You can see that they want to improve, but it’s just that when the pressure hits, the bad habits come back. I am still very persistent about changing their way of working in the kitchen, so for me now it’s more about finding ways to help them get there, by talking to them and really being in their shoes, trying to understand them. It’s changed me a lot, and I’m still adapting.”

Despite the hurdles brought on by catering to a new audience and training new staff, at least one thing has stayed constant for the Singaporean chef: the love he receives from his longtime customers he met during his time in fine dining, many of whom have become his close friends. Just a quick scan of Voon’s Instagram page will show you countless photos of familiar faces frequenting his restaurant, both celebrities and gourmands alike.

“My regulars have been very supportive and they always come back,” he says with a smile. “But sometimes they’ll tell me they really liked what I used to do with my kind of French cooking, and they’ll ask for it. I’ll try to deliver, but I will also tease them with what I’m doing right now and get them in tune with it. 

“It’s a challenge, because I’m running a whole different menu in the kitchen, but to me it’s about caring for people. Some of these guys are very, very old friends, and I try to deliver for them. That said, you know, a lot of people tell me I should’ve stuck to what I did. Well, it’s my life too, and it’s for me to decide. When you’ve done something for so many years, you just feel that you want to do something which is authentically yourself.”

As our conversation came to a close, I took us back once again to our previous meeting a year ago. At the time, the chef had said that this new restaurant was an exploration of what it meant to be Voon; it was an opportunity for him to discover, or rediscover, himself. Now, 12 months later, what has he learned about himself?

“What I learned about Voon over the past year is that I have to be more understanding, I have to be calmer, and I have to be more patient,” he tells me. “I need to see things in a constructive way, to understand the people around me and how they function, to learn about this new demographic of guests coming in and their palates, and how to take this restaurant to the next level even though it’s a casual bistro.

“But I will be really honest, and I don’t mind saying that I am still finding my true way. I just want to be truthful. I have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, but I have to make sure I don’t walk into a wall. It’s still a journey, and I think I’m still perfecting it, but I still need time.”