The doyen of grand French cuisine gets candid about the importance of fine and accessible dining and reveals how confident he is of the recently-launched BBR by Alain Ducasse earning a Michelin star
The decision to open a restaurant housed in a Singapore landmark hotel is far from an easy one to make. But for one of the world’s most iconic chefs, the ever-affable Alain Ducasse, it helped that it coincided with a particularly fond memory of visiting and cooking at Raffles Hotel Singapore over 30 years ago.
It was also after major renovation works, he recalls, and he had been invited to cook for a special event to celebrate the reopening. It was his first time visiting the Grand Dame and what he experienced made a lasting impression. “The diversity, quality and design of the F&B offerings were the best in Asia at that time,” he tells us during a quick catch-up following the launch of BBR by Alain Ducasse two weeks ago, which has taken over the hotel’s famed 122-year-old Bar and Billiard Room.
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Regarding why it had taken him this long—after launching more than 30 restaurants across seven countries and three continents—to open a restaurant here, the 63-year-old French-born Monégasque chef simply affirmed that it was only a matter of time. “There is a saying that [good] things come at the right time if you have time,” he posits, adding how he was drawn to the Bar and Billiard Room from the start because he likes the idea of investing in a landmark space to develop a concept with a “contemporary design and a strong vision”. He noted that he had also wanted the project to coincide with the “spirit behind the renovation” of the iconic hotel.