Chef Johanne Siy to open Aro restaurant in Singapore — Channel NewsAsia
Filipino chef Johanne Siy will open her first restaurant of her own, Aro, in Singapore on September 25. The establishment is located on Mohamed Sultan Road in the premises previously occupied by the Esora restaurant, Channel NewsAsia reports.
The name Aro means “love” in Pangasinan, Siy’s native dialect. The chef was born in the Philippines and has lived in Singapore for two decades. In 2023, she received the Asia’s Best Female Chef award. Before launching Aro, Siy worked at the Lolla restaurant, which later closed, and spent the past year and a half travelling, visiting food producers and gathering ideas for the new menu.
Focus on lesser-known products
Aro’s concept is built around products that Siy believes remain undervalued, especially in Southeast Asia. She wants to draw attention not only to ingredients, but also to the artisans, producers and communities that support food systems.
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Filipino products on the opening menu include rare gamet seaweed from Ilocos in the northern Philippines, stingless bee honey from Laguna, pili nuts from Bicol and Asin Tibuok salt from Bohol. Gamet seaweed is served with French Gillardeau oysters and other types of seaweed. Pili nuts, usually consumed as sweets, are used at the restaurant for a savoury custard made from pili nut milk, complemented by jamon, fried capers, egg yolk sauce and caviar.
Salt and familiar dishes
Asin Tibuok salt is made by filtering seawater through ash from coconut husks, after which the brine is boiled in clay pots. The salt is formed into distinctive egg-shaped blocks. UNESCO has included the family practice of making it on its list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding. At Aro, it is grated over cucumber sorbet with citrus granita, pomelo and lime.
The menu also includes updated versions of dishes Siy prepared previously: a tart with spanner crab and aligue sauce, as well as avocado with smoked eel, cucumber, black garlic, yuzu, coconut, dashi and jalapeno granita. The chef stressed that Aro’s cuisine is not positioned as exclusively Filipino: she called the use of products from the Philippines a natural result of her recent travels around the country.
