Jaan by Kirk Westaway

At 70 floors above Stamford Road, the approach to Jaan by Kirk Westaway is itself a statement of intent. The elevator ride strips away street-level Singapore and deposits you into a room where the city's grid spreads in every direction, equidistant from the colonial core of the Civic District and the financial towers of the CBD. Few dining rooms in Southeast Asia carry quite this spatial clarity: you are above the city, looking down at it, and the meal is framed accordingly. The architecture of the room recedes, and what remains is the view, the table, and the sequence of courses placed in front of you.

This physical remove matters because it establishes the dining ritual before the first plate arrives. Jaan operates as a destination in the strict sense: nobody wanders in from a nearby street. You book in advance, you dress for the occasion, you arrive with the evening allocated. The format demands a certain deliberateness from its guests, and in return it offers a meal structured around that same deliberateness.

British Contemporary in a Southeast Asian City

Singapore's fine dining tier has consolidated around a small number of formats: French-influenced tasting menus at Les Amis and Odette, European Contemporary at Zén, and a growing cohort of innovative kitchens such as Meta and Thevar that work explicitly with regional ingredients and traditions. Jaan occupies a singular position in that map: it is a British Contemporary kitchen operating at two-Michelin-star level, far from Britain, and framing that distance as an advantage rather than an obstacle.

The logic is coherent once you examine it. British contemporary cooking, particularly in its post-Fergus Henderson, post-St. John iteration, has always depended on sourcing over technique showmanship. Translate that sourcing logic to Southeast Asia and the produce available becomes dramatically wider: tropical vegetables, regional seafood, herbs that do not survive a thirty-six-hour flight from Devon. The kitchen draws on its own greenhouse as well as suppliers across the broader Asian region, and the result is a menu that is recognisably British in its structural instincts — restraint, vegetable weight, produce-forward plating — while being locally contingent in its raw materials.

For context on how British Contemporary kitchens approach this same philosophy on home territory, EP Club covers the format across the UK, from Anchor & Hope in London and Chesil Rectory in Winchester to Dog and Gun Inn in Skelton, The Cross in Kenilworth, Heathcock in Cardiff, Greyhound on the Test in Edinburgh, Kynd in Hampton in Arden, and Dishes in Prestatyn. The Jaan format sits at the formal, accoladed end of that spectrum, distinguished by its awards density and its geographical displacement.

The Shape of the Meal

The dining ritual at Jaan is structured as a progressive tasting sequence, and the pacing is deliberate. Fish and seafood appear as recurring anchors through the menu, consistent with the kitchen's access to high-quality regional maritime produce. Vegetables, however, carry unusual weight for a kitchen at this price tier: rather than functioning as accompaniment or garnish, they are treated as primary subjects across multiple courses.

The English Garden course has become the clearest expression of this priority. Composed from more than 30 vegetables, herbs, and flowers, it is a preparation that requires significant sourcing discipline and kitchen labour, and its presence on the menu signals something about the kitchen's hierarchy of effort. The La Liste evaluation noted it specifically, awarding the fully plant-based menu option five Radishes, the guide's highest commendation for plant-forward cooking. That a two-Michelin-star kitchen offers a 100% vegetable dinner as a fully realised option, not a supplementary adaptation, positions Jaan in a narrow peer set globally.

Sequencing of the meal also respects a classical British rhythm: restrained beginnings, a structural middle built on protein and vegetable courses of roughly equal register, and a dessert chapter that tends toward tartness and lightness rather than richness. The pacing is unhurried in the way that high-altitude dining rooms tend to enforce: there is no street noise to compete with, no passing foot traffic to distract from the table.

Awards Density and Peer Positioning

Few restaurants in Singapore carry the accumulated validation that Jaan does across multiple independent evaluation systems. Two Michelin stars have been maintained across both the 2024 and 2025 guides. The La Liste score sits at 92 points in 2026 (92.5 in 2025), placing it in the upper tier of that guide's global ranking. Opinionated About Dining ranked it 45th in Asia in 2024, up from 56th in 2023. Asia's 50 Best placed it at number 77 in 2025. The Les Grandes Tables du Monde membership, awarded in 2025, adds a French-originated peer validation to a kitchen operating in a British idiom, which speaks to the universality of the technical standard rather than any particular national culinary tradition.

The Black Pearl 2 Diamond designation in 2025 rounds out a picture of consistent cross-guide recognition. This kind of awards spread, across guides that use different methodologies and different evaluator networks, suggests alignment across multiple professional judgements rather than strong performance in a single ranking system.

Within Singapore specifically, Jaan sits in a peer set alongside Odette and Les Amis at the two-star tier, while Zén operates above it at the three-star level and a higher price point. The $$$ pricing places Jaan in the same tier as Meta and at a lower entry point than Zén or Born, making it one of the more accessible entry points into Singapore's decorated tasting menu circuit.

Service and the Table's Register

The service register at a kitchen operating under this many concurrent awards tends toward formality without austerity. The elevation of the room and the occasion of booking a tasting menu create a natural guest disposition toward attention and engagement, and the floor team at this tier is trained to work with that rather than against it. Courses are explained in terms of their sourcing logic and their structural role in the sequence, not as recitations of technique for technique's sake.

For guests unfamiliar with tasting menu protocol, the practical notes are worth understanding before you arrive. Courses arrive at intervals calibrated to the kitchen's pacing, and the full dinner service runs to the 10:30pm close. Lunch runs from 11:45am with the same format compressed into the afternoon window. The Tuesday-to-Saturday schedule means weekend diners have Saturday as their only option, which concentrates demand on that service.

The Broader Singapore Fine Dining Context

Singapore's position as a fine dining capital in Asia rests on a specific structural advantage: high disposable income among both residents and visitors, a culture that treats restaurant meals as serious occasions, and a regulatory environment that allows restaurants to import freely across a wide range of produce categories. Those conditions have produced a dense concentration of decorated kitchens in a city of fewer than six million people.

Jaan's longevity in that environment, maintaining two stars while a significant number of peers have risen and fallen in the rankings, reflects both the consistency of the kitchen's output and the enduring appeal of the high-altitude format at a city that has embraced vertical dining as a category. The Google rating of 4.6 across 646 reviews suggests the guest experience consistently translates across different visitor profiles, not only the specialist food press audience.

For a wider view of where Jaan sits within the city's full dining map, our full Singapore restaurants guide covers the city across all price tiers and cuisine types. For planning the rest of a Singapore trip, see our full Singapore hotels guide, our full Singapore bars guide, our full Singapore wineries guide, and our full Singapore experiences guide.

Know Before You Go

• Address: 2 Stamford Road, Level 70, Singapore 178882
• Cuisine: British Contemporary
• Price tier: $$$
• Hours: Tuesday to Friday: lunch 11:45am–2:30pm, dinner 6:30–10:30pm; Saturday: lunch 11:45am–2:30pm, dinner 6:30–10:30pm; Monday and Sunday: closed
• Awards: Michelin 2 Stars (2024, 2025); La Liste 92pts (2026), 92.5pts (2025); Asia's 50 Best #77 (2025); Opinionated About Dining Asia #45 (2024); Les Grandes Tables du Monde (2025); Black Pearl 2 Diamond (2025)
• Google rating: 4.6 (646 reviews)
• Plant-based option: Full 100% vegetable tasting menu available; La Liste-awarded 5 Radishes

Frequently Asked Questions

What do people recommend at Jaan by Kirk Westaway?

The English Garden course draws the most consistent attention: a composition of more than 30 vegetables, herbs, and flowers that functions as both a showcase of the kitchen's sourcing range and its clearest argument for vegetables as the structural centre of a high-end meal. Fish and seafood courses are a recurring strength given the kitchen's access to regional maritime produce. For those open to a fully plant-based format, the 100% vegetable menu has received the La Liste five-Radish commendation, the guide's highest plant-forward rating, and is worth considering as the primary booking format rather than an alternative. Chef Kirk Westaway's reinterpretation of British culinary traditions through Asian-sourced ingredients is the conceptual thread that runs through all of these, grounded in awards recognition across Michelin, La Liste, Asia's 50 Best, and Opinionated About Dining.