If you’ve ever wondered what it is like dining in a home in Rosemead California, a trip to the newly opened restaurant of the same name, at Cecil Street, might give an idea of what to expect.

Rosemead, which offers a convivial fine dining experience, is the latest concept from the Jigger & Pony Group. It is named after the hometown of chef David Tang, who helms the restaurant.

The restaurant is housed in a late ’20s building, designed by Keys and Dowdeswell in a neo-classical architectural style. Past occupants include Kwangtung Provincial Bank and the Bank of East Asia.

Indra Kantono, co-founder at Jigger & Pony, was charmed by the building’s high ceiling and large windows. “The building has heritage which we want to celebrate and respect but at the same time, we also want to create new energy in it,” he says. “You don’t expect an old building with its own alfresco dining area to be surrounded by skyscrapers.”

Lim Siew Hui, founder of Hui Designs designed the space like a modern rustic country home. The restaurant is bright and airy, a total contrast to the previous restaurant, The Black Swan, which was done up in an Art Deco style.

To evoke the feeling of fine dining but in a warm but cosy home, Lim had the entire space gutted out. Lim is not one to trash everything, so she repurposed the Art Deco mirror and globular lights from The Black Swan.

The space is awash with earthy colours such as rust and sky grey with splashes of copper and mustard. Existing pillars and cornices are left exposed, and some walls have had their paint stripped off for that distressed look.

“When you are working on an old building, you don’t have to age it to bring soul to the space,” says Lim.

Kantono adds: “The imperfection of an old space makes it more valuable, and you can create an atmosphere and feeling that is unexpected.”

The centrepiece of the restaurant is the copper-clad, custom-built open hearth kitchen. The cuisine here is modern Californian with a large focus on seasonal ingredients and cooking over an open fire.

Lim reveals that the hearth is not placed in the middle of the restaurant although it looks like it.

“That’s one of the tricky parts about working in a quadrant-shaped space,” she says. But diners need not worry about that. All the tables have been placed in such a way that diners will get a view of the hearth.

Rosemead is currently only open for dinner, but diners can expect it to open for lunch in time. Its bakery is also opening soon. Kantono says that the space is all about brightness during the day, and in the evenings, it takes on a warm hue. “Regardless of the time, it time, it will always be an elegant space,” he says.

19 Cecil Street

Chef Samuel Quan may only be 29 years old, but he considers himself an old soul. So, when he set about finding a place to start his own restaurant, neighbourhoods such as Tiong Bahru and Serangoon Gardens – which usually appeal to the hip and young crowd – didn’t attract him. Neither did he want a space in a shiny new building.

Instead, he found his space on 70 Eu Tong Sen Street, in the Yue Hwa Building. Quan’s modern European-Asian restaurant, Eclipse, is on the top floor of the six-storey building that was built in 1927.

Originally named Nam Tin, which means southern sky in Cantonese, the building was designed and built by architectural firm Swan & Maclaren, in a style inspired by the Modern Movement of the time.

While the facade was kept simple due to budget limitations, the upper floors had wrought-iron arches and lampposts, which were trendy embellishments in the ’30s.

The building used to house the Great Southern Hotel, a restaurant, a cabaret and a tea house.

“I love spaces that tell a story,” says Quan, who visited the store only once during his younger days and remembered it to have “old-school vibes but was disorganised”.

While shoppers would be more familiar with the lower floors which house department store Yue Hwa Chinese Products with its bright lights and array of items, Eclipse, with its dark and club-like vibe, offers diners an unexpected experience, which was what Quan wanted.

While most of the building’s current visitors tend to be the more mature crowd, Quan says, with Eclipse, “I wanted to bring back that new, young energy”.

The top floor was previously an office, and converting it into a restaurant, particularly in a conservation building, came with its set of challenges for both Quan and architectural firm, Mono.X.

For example, awnings cannot be added to the roof garden so as not to have unsightly structures, while some kitchen walls were not solid enough to take the weight of shelves.

Then there were the usual waterproofing and levelling of the floor that needed to be done.

These are issues that don’t concern diners, who are more likely to be wowed by the restaurant’s ceiling, which gives it a cave-like appearance.

“I wanted a free-form structure for the ceiling, something that is creative and imaginative,” says Quan, of the wire mesh ceiling that comes interspersed with lights. Perhaps this is what dining on the moon is like.

The most photogenic spot is at the bar, with a half-moon mirror at the back, while the best seats in the house are in a glass-enclosed room, with views of the neighbourhood.

Visitors who stumble upon Eclipse are surprised when told that the restaurant doesn’t serve Chinese food. “But that has not stopped them from still choosing to dine with us,” says Quan. “Diners enjoy the experience of dining in an unexpected space.”

#06-01 Yue Hwa Building 

Singapore-born, London-based designer Sacha Leong loves transforming old spaces into new. “I like working with spaces that have a history and context. It enriches the design and grounds it in its place. The original features give us as designers something to play against,” says Leong, co-founder of design firm Nice Projects.

He adds, “in the case of Claudine, the original mosaic tiles and the grillwork on the windows really contribute to the overall look and feel of the space”, referring to the French restaurant by award-winning Chef-Patron Julien Royer.

Claudine, named after Royer’s mother, is located in a ’30s Ebenezer chapel. Leong, together with co-founder Simone McEwan, were inspired by the traditional French brasserie when designing the space, coupled with the local landscape of Dempsey Hill.

Original elements such as the stained glass window have been preserved – it is now an eye-catching centrepiece above the bar.

The existing gabled roof has been painted a dark red to give warmth to the space, while lancet windows lined with mirrors add vibrancy to the space.

Leong says that when working on old spaces, “there are always surprises but nothing major that could not be integrated into the overall design concept”.

He adds: “If anything, some of the details added a lot of character to the space. An example is how we transformed the existing holy water fonts into wall-mounted candles.”

Also vying for attention is a 15m-long paper lamp custom-made by Spanish lighting designers Santa & Cole, as well as the site-specific artwork, Singapore Pastoral, by botanical designers This Humid House which comprises pressed grass panels made from locally foraged plants that envelop the dining room.

Leong says one of the challenges of this project was “finding the balance between respecting the original architecture and creating something fresh and exciting in the space”.

There’s no doubt he has succeeded in doing that.

39C Harding Road

This article first appeared in The Business Times