Great Dining Places in Singapore: 10 Spots We'd Actually Book

TL;DR: Ten places below, Akasa’s our pick at the top, jump to the table if you’re in a rush.

We put this list together after fielding the same question from regulars at Akasa for years: where else is actually worth eating in Singapore. Ten places made the cut, starting with us (not going to pretend otherwise), then nine others that get genuine repeat visits from people we know. Some cost five dollars a head, some cost ten times that. All ten are great dining places in Singapore worth the trip, not just worth a photo, and the Indian restaurant Singapore regulars keep mentioning is right here at number one.

The Lineup: 10 Great Dining Places in Singapore

Price ranges run roughly $ (under S$15/head) to $$$$ (S$150+/head), as a rough gut check before you book.

A Bit More on Each One

1. Akasa, Tanjong Pagar This is where the list starts, and not just because we’re biased. Akasa’s built around North Indian and vegetarian cooking, plated with more attention than most curry houses bother with. Butter chicken and dal makhani are the dishes people keep ordering, but the vegetarian tasting menu genuinely holds its own next to the meat-heavy one, which isn’t true everywhere. They also handle private celebrations and catering, on top of regular service. The full menu and setting are on our Indian fine dining in Singapore page.
2. Jaan by Kirk Westaway, City Hall Seventy floors up at Swissotel The Stamford, with a modern British tasting menu and a Michelin star to back it up. The skyline view makes the bill feel slightly more reasonable. Book a few weeks out if you want a window table on a weekend.
3. Birds of a Feather, Amoy Street Sichuan spice run through a Western kitchen, under a skylight that’s barely changed in close to a decade. The sharing menu is the laziest, most reliable way to order here, since the menu itself doesn’t sit neatly in one cuisine.
4. Newton Food Centre, Newton Satay, chilli crab, char kway teow, cooked at stalls that have been at it for decades. Cheapest “great” meal on this list by a wide margin, and it stays open well past most kitchens close. Good answer for a weeknight when nobody wants to plan.
5. Spago, Marina Bay Sands Fifty-seven floors up, overlooking the infinity pool and most of the city. Strong cocktails, decent burrata, and a setting that does a lot of the work for you on a celebration night.
6. PS.Cafe, Dempsey Hill Garden setting, all-day menu, low effort. This is where you go when the group can’t agree on a cuisine, which is more often than people admit.
7. Cote Korean Steakhouse, Orchard Smokeless grills built right into the tables, with servers trained to cut and cook for you. The booth seating gives each table some privacy, which makes it a solid pick for a birthday dinner or a work celebration that needs to feel like more than a regular Tuesday.
8. No Signboards Seafood, Geylang Open since the 1970s and apparently in no hurry to change. Chilli crab and white pepper crab are why the queue keeps showing up, and it’s loud enough that a big, messy family table fits right in.
9. Komala Vilas, Little India South Indian vegetarian food, mostly dosas and thalis, at prices that make it one of the better-value vegetarian restaurants in Singapore. Worth pairing with a visit to Akasa if you’re curious how far vegetarian Indian cooking can go once the price tag goes up.
10. Amoy & Telok Ayer Stretch, Tanjong Pagar A few blocks pack in enough izakayas, wine bars, and Indian tapas spots that you don’t really need a plan, just an appetite. Quiet enough at lunch for a business meeting, busy enough after 6pm for proper dinner and drinks.

Picking by Occasion, Not Just by Name

The cheapest route to a good dinner is almost always a hawker centre like Newton, while the fine dining spots get noticeably more affordable at lunch, when Akasa and Jaan both run shorter set menus for a fraction of the dinner price. If you’re sorting out a CBD lunch meeting, the better lunch spots cluster around Tanjong Pagar and Anson Road, and our guide to lunch in Singapore has more on that specifically. Bringing the family, including the picky eaters and the grandparents? A family dinner in Singapore spot with flexible seating beats a tasting-menu-only kitchen every time.

Vegetarian and North Indian Dining in Singapore

Akasa’s vegetarian tasting menu isn’t a side note to the regular one, it’s built with the same care, using paneer, lentils, and seasonal vegetables instead of swapping meat for whatever’s left in the kitchen. If you’re after a north Indian restaurant in Singapore more generally, butter chicken and dal makhani are the dishes worth ordering first. An indian vegetarian restaurant Singapore that treats the vegetarian menu as a full menu, not an apology tacked onto the back page, is rarer than it should be, and it’s the main reason a lot of repeat diners keep coming back.

Private Dining, Catering and Office Parties

A good chunk of the bookings at Akasa aren’t walk-ins, they’re birthdays, work anniversaries, and the occasional office party that needed a corporate dinner venue in Singapore with private seating and a kitchen used to feeding twenty people at once without slowing down. Team dinner Singapore bookings work much the same way, just with more polite small talk. Catering for events that don’t even happen at the restaurant is also on the table, worth asking about if something off-site is what you’re actually planning.

Best Neighbourhoods for a Night Out

Tanjong Pagar is the easiest answer if you just want to wander and find something good, Indian, Japanese, Sichuan, and Western kitchens are all within a few minutes of each other, with Akasa sitting right in the middle of that stretch. Little India is the better pick if dosas and sweets are more your speed than a sit-down dinner, and restaurants in Little India Singapore go well beyond Komala Vilas if you start looking. Orchard and Marina Bay lean pricier and more polished, which suits a different kind of evening entirely.

Date Nights and Special Occasions

Romantic restaurants Singapore searches tend to surface the same rooftop names every time, Spago and Jaan included, but a quieter table at Akasa does the job just as well without needing a skyline to feel like an occasion. For birthdays specifically, the best restaurants for birthday dinner Singapore lists usually point toward somewhere with a bit of privacy and a menu flexible enough for a mixed group, which is exactly the gap Akasa’s private dining was built to fill.

Before You Book

Saturday nights go fast, so anything on a “best Saturday dining” list is worth booking a few days ahead, not the morning of. Mention dietary needs (vegetarian, vegan, halal) when you reserve rather than when you sit down, since most kitchens handle this better with notice. And if there are six or more of you, a phone call usually gets a better table than an online form does.