Yì By Jereme Leung

Should You Book Yì By Jereme Leung?

Getting a table at Yì is harder than it looks. Situated inside Raffles Singapore — one of the city's most in-demand hotel dining addresses — this contemporary Chinese restaurant draws a steady flow of hotel guests, returning regulars, food-focused travellers who have done their research. If you are planning a trip around this meal, book at least three to four weeks out. If you are visiting during a major Singapore public holiday or the Lunar New Year period, extend that to six weeks minimum. Walk-ins at Raffles Arcade dining venues are possible but unreliable.

The short answer: yes, book it, particularly if contemporary Chinese cooking is what you came to Singapore to explore and you want a setting that frames the cuisine with intention.

The Experience

Yì sits on the third floor of Raffles Arcade at 328 North Bridge Road, positioned within one of Singapore's most storied hotel properties. The room carries the ambient weight of that address. Expect a measured atmosphere rather than a buzzing one, the energy here is considered and relatively composed, suited to long meals where the food does the talking. This is not the venue for a loud celebration dinner with a dozen colleagues; it is better calibrated for two to four guests who want to engage with the menu at pace. The noise level stays manageable across most sittings, which makes it a sound choice when conversation matters as much as the cooking.

Contemporary Chinese cuisine at this level is about structure. The menu at Yì is built around Jereme Leung's interpretation of Chinese culinary traditions, reframed through a modern fine dining lens. Where older-generation Chinese restaurants in Singapore might rely on ceremony and volume, Yì works with restraint and precision. The tasting experience, as it progresses, is designed to move through registers, not just flavour, but texture, temperature, the pace at which dishes arrive. This is Chinese food with an architectural sensibility rather than a nostalgic one. Diners who appreciate how a tasting menu builds and resolves, the way a mid-course can recalibrate your palate before something richer follows, will find the format here satisfying. Diners who prefer ordering freely from a carte might find the structured progression less intuitive, though the restaurant operates at a $$ price point that makes it more accessible than its Michelin-tracked peers in the city.

For context on what contemporary Chinese fine dining looks like at the top of its category globally, the approach at Yì shares DNA with venues like Da Dong (Xuhui) in Shanghai, Gastro Esthetics at DaDong in Shanghai, and Gastro Esthetics DaDong in Beijing, all of which approach classical Chinese technique through a fine dining frame. In Southeast Asia, Yì holds its own as one of the more considered examples of the genre. If you are tracking contemporary Chinese cooking across the region, also worth noting are Wild Yeast in Hangzhou, Ensue at the in Shenzhen, and further afield, Bao Li in Madrid and Cheng Yuan in Yangzhou.

Within Singapore itself, Yì occupies a specific niche. If you are building a broader dining itinerary, the city's French-influenced fine dining tier, anchored by venues like Les Amis and Odette, operates at a different register and a higher price point. For European contemporary tasting menus, Zén and Jaan by Kirk Westaway are the obvious comparators. For something more experimental, Meta takes a looser approach to Asian-inflected fine dining. Yì is the address to choose when the cuisine type itself, contemporary Chinese, is the specific reason you are booking, when you want the Raffles context without paying the top-of-market supplement that comes with Waku Ghin.

Know Before You Go

How It Compares

See the comparison section below for how Yì sits against Summer Pavilion, Waku Ghin, Zén, Jaan by Kirk Westaway, Iggy's.

Further Reading

• Our full Singapore restaurants guide
• Our full Singapore hotels guide
• Our full Singapore bars guide
• Our full Singapore wineries guide
• Our full Singapore experiences guide
• 24 Suns, Chinese Contemporary, Oceanside