Chef Marcus Leow of Belimbing breathes new life into mod-Sin cuisine

Jostling elbows at the stalls of a wet market, it wouldn’t be hard to pick out ingredients that would find their way to a typical dining table in Singapore. The ubiquitous kailan, the curly-edged wing beans commonly used in stir-fries, or even the pale pink tulip-shaped torch ginger flower, a key ingredient in rojak. 

To Marcus Leow, head chef of modern-Singapore (mod-Sin) restaurant Belimbing, these familiar ingredients shape his perception of Singaporean cuisine. “When I see familiar ingredients at the wet market, I consider the dishes made from them to be local cuisine.”

The 33-year-old is not the first chef to attempt mod-Sin cuisine. He joins a line of chefs before him: Willin Low, of the now-defunct Wild Rocket, who popularised laksa pesto linguine, and beef ribs with rendang and achar back in 2005; Han Li Guang, of one-Michelin-starred Restaurant Labyrinth, whose riff on chilli crab ice cream (now no longer on his menu) was unthought of in 2014.

Now, Leow is adding to the table a quiet innovation that interplays familiarity with intrigue. 

His approach towards modernising Singapore food is to pair local ingredients with the unexpected, drawing on familiar flavours dressed in ways one wouldn’t imagine. 

Take his cold starter of Smoked Wagyu Ox Tongue. Thin slivers of ox tongue are smoked and paired with chincalok and fermented shrimp made in-house. The dish is then laced with starfruit juice, adding a bright acidity that cuts through the buttery mouthfeel of the ox tongue.

“With things like chincalok and starfruit juice, I think many people have tried them separately before. But few would have tried them together, especially paired with ox tongue and stracciatella,” says Leow. “So, when you read (the dish name) on the menu, it doesn’t feel very familiar. But when people eat it, they say, ‘Oh, this tastes very familiar!’,” he exclaims.

It is this heart of familiarity dressed in creative new fashion that defines mod-Sin cuisine to Leow. He likens Singapore food to having many layers, much like a rempah. 

“Rempah is so open to interpretation; I think it is really like the building block of all things,” shares Leow. 

“The idea of rempah being a mix of everything is very interesting to me,” he says. “For instance, if I want a mild rempah, I would use green chillies. Or, I can add fennel in rempah, which would change its flavour, but you can still taste its ‘backbone’, which is very Singaporean.” 

Diners can see this in the cold starter dish of aged kanpachi. At first glance, it seems to be a Japanese-influenced dish. Slices of soy-brushed aged amberjack are nestled in a cold curry made from a rempah with diced pink guava added to it.

The fruit is usually enjoyed as a juice or on its own, but when worked into the rempah, it lends a mild and subtly familiar sweetness to the curry that complements the fish.

Growing up in a household where weekends were spent visiting his Peranakan grandparents, Leow recalls being immersed in the aromas of charcoal-cooked dishes, which left a lasting impression. “Smelling charcoal evokes a strong memory for me, because my grandparents used to cook soup over charcoal”, he shares. One of his favourite soups was a handmade fishball soup from scratch.

“My grandparents would make this soup whenever they found conger pike in the market,” he recalls. “They would chop the fish and make it into fishballs, and I’ll have the soup with lots of white pepper.” 

He also recalls how his dad would make ayam buah keluak, a classic Peranakan recipe where black candlenuts are soaked, pounded, and stuffed with chicken. “My parents always made it with pork, so I didn’t know there was a chicken version,” says Leow with a chuckle. 

Yet, Leow wasn’t always inclined to cook; in fact, he candidly admits that he does not have a good track record of sticking to something for long. “When I was young, I took up taekwondo, and my parents would buy the whole set of gear. Then, two weeks in, I gave up when it was too hard,” says Leow.

Cooking, in fact, was the first thing that stuck. His first stint was at Spruce cafe at Phoenix Park over 10 years ago, where he couldn’t even touch the ingredients — his primary role was to wash dishes, and fry an egg on occasion. 

When asked why he didn’t just throw in the towel like he did before, Leow laughs. “Of course, I wanted to prove my parents wrong and show I can stick to something. But also with cooking, there’s always something harder for you to try and master, and that challenge really pulls me in.” 

It was while working under Australian chef Sam Aisbett at Whitegrass in 2016 that Leow was first inspired to incorporate local ingredients in Western fare. “I thought it was cool how (Aisbett) would take pork jowl and wrap it with fatt choy (black moss). It was the first time I actually thought about assimilating Asian culture into Western food.”

Leow then took this inspiration to Magic Square, a pop-up restaurant showcasing the talent of local chefs. Here, he worked with chefs Desmond Shen and Abel Su to lean into their roots and showcase different facets of Singaporean cuisine.

Magic Square was where Leow tapped deep into his Peranakan roots and used his experience at Whitegrass to boldly experiment with turning the familiar into something unique. 

At Magic Square, Leow wanted to explore recreating the buah keluak dish from his childhood, but found himself wanting a substitute for pork.

“I thought, ‘The dish worked because pork has a distinct flavour. What if I could replace it with something just as strong a flavour?’ I thought of Brussels sprouts, because the bitter root flavour is very distinctive, and I felt it would pair well with buah keluak for a less heavy version of the original dish,” he says.

It is fitting, then, that one of the next dishes he is thinking about creating at Belimbing is a riff on congee that also uses, well, brussels sprouts. “I really like brussels sprouts, and I’ve been experimenting with them for a vegetarian option on the menu,” shares Leow.

The dish he has in mind takes inspiration from brassica cabbage, which is turned into a stock for congee. Brussels sprouts are then seared with Chinese olive vegetable butter and served with the cabbage porridge. “It’ll still pair very well with the little pickles we do for the main courses too — a bit like Teochew muay.”