Fine-dining western food of that era tended to be rich and heavy. But both Lim and Quek recognised that this wasn’t ideal for both local customers and Singapore’s tropical climate. “My style has always been very light,” says Quek. “When I came back from France, I knew that so much of what they serve there across the different seasons wouldn’t work here. You needed to adapt. You also had to know your customers. If I was cooking for more Asian customers, I needed to make sure the food would be to their tastes. My foundation was French, but I lightened the cuisine and incorporated Asian touches.”

Convinced, Lim, along with another (silent) backer Dr Chong Yap Seng, entered into a partnership with Chan and Quek and took over a furniture shop in Shaw Centre, facing out onto the Claymore Hill side street. “The location really appealed to me,” shares Lim, “It’s just off Orchard [Road], but not on it. It’s street level, but not a main street.” 

Les Amis opened with a bang. The combination of Lim’s social network; the extraordinary wine list that he and Chan brought together; and the novelty of an all-local team producing tasty, lighter dishes that matched the wines that patrons were consuming, made the restaurant an instant success. As the first independent fine-dining restaurant in the country, it also changed the local dining sector, setting an example for a generation of restaurateurs inspired to start their own establishments. 

Over the next 10 years, Les Amis set the standard for fine dining in Singapore. It attracted heads of states, movie stars and the region’s one-percenters. At the same time, Les Amis also became much more than just a restaurant; it evolved into a group with a range of businesses, some high-end, others targeted at mass audiences and, at one point, even frozen foods.

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For Chan, the expansion didn’t sit well. As the group expanded, he was pushed out of the dining room and into a corporate role. “It was never my intention to be a CEO of a conglomerate. I just really wanted to run a mom and pop style restaurant, a place where I can ensure the service is personalised so that every customer has a great experience. But we kept growing,” says Chan. “So when Justin said he wanted to go, he triggered it, you know, he gave me an excuse to leave.”

Quek’s motivation to leave: “My marriage fell apart. I was working too hard. I just couldn’t keep doing the same thing every day.” He admits that many people misconstrued his decision and wants to make the point, “I didn’t betray anyone. I was losing my family, which is a big deal.” 

Lim tells us that the split took him completely by surprise. But he never considered closing the restaurant. Fortunately, he says, Chan had been building a good team of lieutenants who were ready and willing to step up. Raymond Lim, who started his career as a server at Les Amis and rose to become director of the corporate office, remembers that transition period, “It presented an opportunity for more dynamic, younger people like me and Randy [See] to move up the ranks. Randy and I soon became Mr Lim’s de facto left and right hands.” But even if the management was in safe hands, “the most important thing then was to find a replacement chef”. 

Fortunately, they had one already working for the group. Belgium-born Gunther Hubrechsen joined the Les Amis Group fresh from five years at L’Arpège, the iconic Parisian restaurant run by Alain Passard. He had been responsible for opening the Lighthouse, followed by a short-lived, far-ahead-of-its-time restaurant called Amuse-Bouche. In 2003, he was asked to step in and lead Les Amis.

But Hubrechsen made one request. He tells us, “I said I had to be able to bring my whole kitchen team from Amuse-Bouche with me. The team in Les Amis worked for a long time with Justin and they might not want changes. So I insisted that the team I had would follow me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t take on the challenge.” Hubrechsen spent three years as Les Amis’ chef de cuisine.

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Raymond Lim reflects back on that transition period. “It wasn't easy. Because both Justin and Iggy were so closely associated with Les Amis. And then they went on to do their own thing. So we lost some customers. But we kind of took it in stride,” he says. “I think in any industry, be it fashion or food, when a respected predecessor is gone, the incoming creative director or chef always finds there are big shoes to fill. You need to just challenge yourself, and you need a good dose of confidence to tell yourself you can do it. And as much as you want to try, you can never please everybody. But you can always try to create your own niche.”

The story of Les Amis restaurant can be told in three acts, each one lasting approximately 10 years. Act one was a story of discovery and celebration, as a young all-Singaporean team creating something new, extraordinary and iconic. Act two, however, was less successful. Over the 10 years post-Quek and Chan, despite some incredibly talented chefs at the helm, Les Amis’ star started to lose some of its shine. 

Hubrechsen helped the restaurant earn a number 83 ranking in Restaurant Magazine’s World’s Top 100 Restaurants survey, before moving on to open his own eponymous restaurant. Replacing him was Italian-German chef Thomas Mayr, who had worked at the three-Michelin-starred Tantris in Munich and with top American chefs David Bouley and Charlie Trotter. Mayr stayed with the restaurant for two and a half years before moving to Hong Kong to open Cepage, a French fine-dining restaurant also owned by the Les Amis Group. Replacing him in October 2008 was chef Armin Leitgeb, who had worked together with Mayr at Tantris. Leitgeb, who had also worked at celebrated restaurants such as Jardin des Sens in Montpellier and Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry, was already in Singapore, working at Raffles Hotel. Leitgeb stayed with the restaurant until 2012, when he relocated back to his home country Austria to raise his kids. 

While the restaurant began to face stiff competition and visibly lose customers—especially due to the sheer number of new celebrity restaurants that opened at Marina Bay Sands and Resort World Sentosa—the food continued to impress global reviewers. Leitgeb remains especially proud of its accomplishments in his final year there. “We cooked our way up in the international rankings. In 2012, we were ranked number 53 in the San Pellegrino list [The World’s 50 Best Restaurants]. It was also a really big thing for me as well, as head chef of Les Amis, to bring Les Grandes Tables Du Monde for the first time to Singapore.”

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With Leitgeb’s departure, Raymond Lim came up with an ambitious plan. “I had these two young local candidates. They were already working in the restaurant. This was the time when, internationally, there were quite a few restaurants helmed by two head chefs. So I thought it would be quite refreshing,” he shares. “One, to have a restaurant helmed by two head chefs, each strong in their own area. Two, they were both Singaporeans. This would bring us back to how Les Amis started. We wanted to put our stamp of belief and faith in our local talent. But then they got cold feet. We even had their jackets made. One got cold feet, and after he pulled out, the other one also pulled out. So we went back to the drawing board to look for a new chef.” 

In the interim, the restaurant’s popularity took a deep nosedive. So much so that when chef Sebastien Lepinoy, a Joël Robuchon protege who had been running Cepage for the group, agreed to take over the flagship, he was shocked to discover that what was once the top table in the country was now close to empty every day. Even more shocking was the state of the kitchen. While the restaurant’s dining rooms had been renovated several times, the kitchen had remained untouched since it opened.

“I was not so happy,” remembers Lepinoy. “First, the restaurant was empty. The monthly income was only $250,000 and I was told the restaurant was losing money over 20 years. Then, that first week, we had a meeting. I remember Raymond Lim was there, and Randy See. And Desmond Lim. They told me they wanted to cut the restaurant into two, turn the upstairs into a steakhouse and just keep Les Amis to one floor like it was back in 1994 when they first opened.

“I was new, so I just listened. But a week after I said to Desmond Lim, ‘Okay, I resign’.” This was August 2013. After handing in his notice, Lepinoy agreed to stay until December, to give the group time to find a new chef. 

“Desmond asked me to make pasta, cook food with ‘wok hei’, to create flavours that would appeal to Indonesian palates,” shares Lepinoy. “But I said no. I was only going to be there a few months. I would do purely French cuisine. I also decided I would break all of the Les Amis rules.”

The first thing Lepinoy did was launch a $45 set lunch. Given Les Amis’ reputation that it was achingly expensive, this sent shockwaves through the restaurant industry. And given how good the food was, both diners and critics fell over themselves throwing praise at the new chef. “On the first of September,” says Lepinoy, “Jaime Ee [of The Business Times] did an article. She gave me a rating of 9 out of 10. That’s exceptional for her. She hardly gives restaurants such ratings.” 

The tactic was a success. Within less than a month, this once sleepy restaurant was turning away diners. Lepinoy shares, “One lunch we served 97 customers, and every night we were full. And in September, we started to make money.”

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Making money is an interesting topic when it comes to Les Amis. Desmond Lim told The Straits Times reporter Rebecca Lynne Tan back in 2004 that Les Amis (the restaurant) has only ever broken even. In 2019, he said to Jaime Ee, "Fine dining doesn’t make money.” We asked him about this directly. “I think before Sebastien joined us there were a couple of years that we were profitable, but for the majority, we were not profitable,” confirms Lim. 

After making a profit in September 2013, Lepinoy repeated the feat in October and November. In December, Lim and his partner Low Check Kian (who joined the group after Quek and Chan exited) asked Lepinoy to stay on. He agreed, but only if he could renovate both the restaurant and the kitchen. 

The planning and preparation took a year. The year 2014 was profitable for Les Amis. The renovations were finally carried out in March 2015. Lepinoy remembers the time well: “We finished the renovations in April and then people started talking about Michelin [stars].” From these early rumours, earning stars became an obsession for this focused and passionate chef. “Once the guide [Michelin Guide Singapore] was officially announced, I went to see Desmond and Check and said, we need to target two stars minimum. We need to go up a level immediately. We have big competitors with big marketing like Restaurant Andre, Joël Robuchon, Tetsuya and Tippling Club. If we wanted to win the regional market, we had to get at least two stars. That means our pricing had to change, our service level had to change … We started work on this very fast.”

“I was extremely happy when we got the two stars,” admits Lepinoy, “but I said immediately, I want three.” Which he earned in 2019 and has held onto since. 

We are still in the third act of Les Amis, which began in 2013 when Lepinoy joined the restaurant. Today, Les Amis is one of just three restaurants in Singapore that have earned three Michelin stars. It has, once again, reclaimed its position as one of the city’s most prestigious—and expensive—dining spots in Singapore. 

The restaurant has evolved from a novel nexus for society in which a new generation of local foodies and wine lovers discovered the beauty behind a successful marriage of wine and food into a gilded representation of French luxury, serving the most technically refined classic French cuisine found on the island, paired with wines from arguably the finest wine cellar in the country. 

There is an old French saying, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, which translates to “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. The Les Amis restaurant of today is a very different place from the restaurant that opened in the same address 30 years ago. But in some ways, it still plays the same role. 

Ignatius Chan reflects, “Every city needs an iconic restaurant. There are some restaurants that are chef-driven. You hear the restaurant’s name and you think of a dish or a person. Then there are restaurants that define places. Like Taillevant in Paris, that like Les Amis has gone through many great chefs. For me, Les Amis is that restaurant for Singapore.”

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