Michelin Guide Feature: An Interview With Mr Desmond Lim, Chairman Of The Les Amis Group

About: I sat down with the famously media-shy chairman of The Les Amis Group, one of Singapore's largest restaurant groups that runs the two-Michelin-starred Les Amis and the NamNam and Peperoni Pizzeria chains, for a rare interview in conjunction with the group's 25th anniversary in 2019.

The head honcho charts out the highs and lows of running a restaurant group in Singapore competitive dining landscape, his human resource strategy for recruiting young Singapore culinary talents and his biggest lesson learnt as a F&B businessman.

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It is 1pm on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon and two-Michelin-starred French fine-dining restaurant Les Amis is in the thick of lunch service. Its opulent dining room on the ground level at Shaw Centre is teeming with diners — a mix of businessmen and ladies who lunch. Observing the lively scene from a corner of the main dining room is Desmond Lim, the famously low-key chairman of the Les Amis Group, who is waiting to host The MICHELIN Guide Digital for a rare lunch-cum-interview session. Dressed in a sharp black jacket, crisp white shirt and jeans, the bespectacled 62-year-old looks fresh and youthful.

Throughout the leisurely three-hour lunch, Lim (left) peppers the conversation with anecdotes of the highs and lows of running one of Singapore’s most prominent restaurant groups, which include dealing with a steady flow of business proposals and ideas from chefs, surviving in a competitive business landscape and investing in the restaurant operations — from staff training to gleaming food trolleys, which make a frequent appearance throughout the eight-course meal. He says in jest: “There are way too many trolleys in this restaurant — bread, cheese, whiskey and even ice-cream trolleys. We should have a parking lot somewhere.” As we tuck into the sublime canapes of gougere and fava bean tart, Lim reminds us that his day job is running his family’s stockbroking firm Lim & Tan Securities. Being a restaurateur, on the other hand, sounds more like a hobby for the hard-core gourmand.

In 1994, Lim co-founded Les Amis Restaurant together with his friends, Dr Chong Yap Seng, chef Justin Quek and sommelier-turned-restaurateur Ignatius Chan. At that time, it was Singapore’s first French fine-dining restaurant that was not located in a hotel. The group’s crown jewel establishment has received two Michelin stars since 2016, under the stewardship of French chef Sebastien Lepinoy. Besides the fine-dining restaurant, the group has grown steadfastly to 21 restaurant brands spread across in 29 outlets in Singapore, spanning French, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Japanese, Italian and Spanish cuisines. The group also operates more than 30 overseas restaurants, which are mainly joint ventures. Asked about the similarities between running a stockbroking company and a restaurant group, Lim says that both are people-centric business. He says: “Both businesses are about building relationships in order to keep people coming back. It is not about hard-selling. The restaurant business is a happy industry to be in, though it can be commercially tough.”