August 4, 2025
National Day is just around the corner, and it’s not just about flags, parades or fireworks. It’s also a time to celebrate the people who have helped shape what Singapore is today.
One of them is Chef Damian D’Silva. For years, he has been preserving the flavours of our heritage cuisine, making sure the food we grew up with continues to tell our story.
Damian’s journey started far from the spotlight, in the kitchens of his grandparents. One of them cooked a wide range of local dishes, moving effortlessly between Chinese, Malay, Indian and Eurasian styles. The other was deeply Peranakan and believed that cuisine to be the most intricate of them all.
As a child, Damian often helped in the kitchen. He wasn’t trained formally, but through taste, smell and repetition. He came to see that food was never just food. It was tradition, belief, and family. His grandmother once told him that food made without heart and soul would never be remembered. That idea stayed with him.
In the early 2000s, Damian opened a French bistro after working and training in Europe. While the food was well received, he felt disconnected. European cuisine, while elegant, was not the food of his childhood. It didn’t speak to his personal story or the rich diversity he had grown up with.
So he pivoted. He began working with heritage recipes and launched catering menus that brought back dishes many had forgotten. Some were seen as too laborious to prepare in modern kitchens. Damian cooked them anyway. Because he believed these dishes deserved a future, not just a past.
Damian now runs Rempapa, a restaurant focused on Singapore Heritage Cuisine. Its menu features dishes from Peranakan, Eurasian, Malay, Indian and Chinese traditions. He doesn’t dress them up for effect. He presents them as they are, with care and context, so that they can be appreciated on their own terms.
Later this year, he will open a second restaurant inside the National Gallery Singapore. Named Gilmore & Damian D’Silva after his grandfather, the restaurant is a deeply personal project. The building once housed the Supreme Court, where his grandfather worked. The menu will focus on old Eurasian and Chinese recipes, some dating back 200 years, offered in a way that makes them approachable without losing their soul.
Since 2018, Damian has served as a judge on MasterChef Singapore. While others on the panel look for creativity, he encourages contestants to stay grounded in their roots. For him, cooking is not just an act of expression. It is a way of protecting stories from being forgotten.
In a year where Singapore celebrates 60 years of nationhood, Damian D’Silva represents the depth and complexity of the local food story. He doesn’t just cook with tradition. He cooks with purpose. Through his work, the nation’s culinary roots are being passed forward, not as museum pieces, but as living, evolving culture.
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