Thevar

Thevar is a modern Indian restaurant on Mohamed Sultan Road in Singapore, run by chef and owner Manogren 'Mano' Thevar. It holds two Michelin stars.

Thevar was born in Penang and grew up eating at its hawker centres. After his father died he moved to Singapore and took a job in a French restaurant, without having planned to become a cook, and went on to work in French and Japanese kitchens including Guy Savoy and Waku Ghin. He opened Thevar in 2018 because, as he put it, no one else was cooking Malaysian Indian flavours at that level. The second star came in 2022, making him the first Malaysian chef to lead a two-star restaurant.

The menu is a long tasting sequence rooted in Indian cooking and built with European technique. Tomberry tomatoes from the Netherlands become a chaat with tamarind gel and coriander chutney, and crispy pork with jalapeño is wrapped in a betel leaf with sambal aioli. A vadai is shaped like a cheese soufflé and topped with cod milt cooked in spiced butter, while amadai with crisp scales sits on a foam based on ishtu, the stew of Kerala. Chicken thighs slow-cooked with Chettinad spices are shredded and rolled in toasted house-made naan.

Rack of lamb comes with Mysore spices, a butternut masala, a small lamb biryani and a jus made from the trimmings, and dessert can be a sago payasam with a sorbet of Provence melon. The restaurant has since moved from Keong Saik Road into a new space, Thevar 2.0, whose design borrows from Chola temple architecture and traditional Indian homes, with a small chef's table and a private room upstairs. A Penang childhood, a French training and Japanese precision meet on each plate, which is why the menu reads like a personal map rather than a regional survey.