Eric Seow: Twenty Years in the Kitchen and Still Cooking Like It Matters

There is a difference between knowing how to run a kitchen and knowing what it feels like when the kitchen belongs to you.

For Eric Seow, that distinction matters.

The Malaysian chef has spent roughly two decades working across kitchens in Malaysia and Singapore, eventually rising into senior hotel positions. He has led the culinary operation at Sofitel Singapore City Centre, stepped away from the hotel world to run his own restaurant, and has since returned as Executive Chef at Pullman Singapore Orchard.

That career has given him experience on both sides of the pass.

He knows what it means to cook for somebody else's restaurant.

And he knows what it means when every plate, every customer and every mistake becomes personal.

Twenty Years Behind the Pass

Seow's career has largely been built through experience rather than spectacle.

He worked his way through kitchens across Malaysia and Singapore, developing a style that sits comfortably between Western technique and the stronger, more familiar flavours of Asia.

By 2022, he had become Executive Chef at Sofitel Singapore City Centre, overseeing the hotel's culinary direction and its flagship restaurant, Racines.

It was a position that required range.

Hotel chefs do not have the luxury of cooking within a single narrow identity. A restaurant may specialise. A hotel kitchen frequently cannot.

Breakfast becomes lunch. Business diners arrive. Banquets need feeding. International guests expect familiarity while local diners expect food that understands where it is being served.

That breadth was visible in Seow's cooking at Racines.

French Technique, Asian Appetite

At Sofitel, Seow's menus moved easily between cuisines.

A dinner might begin with French cheeses, charcuterie and country pâté before moving into more contemporary European dishes such as Arborio risotto with morel mushrooms and truffle.

Then something completely different would appear.

Sambal seafood rice.

Bak kut teh.

Kolo mee.

Sweet and sour pork.

Even his Wagyu flank steak carried an Asian accent through a dashi soy glaze.

It would be easy for a menu like this to feel scattered.

But it reveals something about the kind of chef Seow became.

He does not seem particularly interested in forcing himself into one culinary category.

Classical technique is useful.

So are the flavours he grew up around.

One does not have to cancel out the other.

Then He Became the Owner

At some point, Seow stepped away from the relative structure of a large hotel operation and became a restaurant owner himself.

His own career record lists nearly three years operating independently before he joined Pullman Singapore Orchard.

That may be one of the most important chapters in his career.

Running a restaurant is different from being responsible for its food.

The chef still has to care about flavour and technique, but suddenly there is nowhere else for the consequences to go.

Ingredients cost money.

Empty tables matter.

Staffing matters.

Waste matters.

A dish that looks impressive but does not sell matters.

And when a guest leaves disappointed, it is no longer simply somebody else's business that has lost the customer.

Ownership changes the way a chef sees the restaurant.

For Seow, it seems to have reinforced an already demanding relationship with the food leaving his kitchen.

Every plate represents the establishment carrying his name and responsibility.

Back Into the Hotel Kitchen

In August 2025, Seow joined Pullman Singapore Orchard as Executive Chef.

It brought him back into the hotel environment, but with considerably more experience than when he had left it.

At Pullman, his responsibilities extend across the property's dining concepts, including Eden Restaurant.

Eden itself is built around contemporary interpretations of Asian food. The restaurant describes its cuisine as a journey across Asia, taking familiar flavours and memories and reworking them through a more modern restaurant language.

It suits Seow remarkably well.

His cooking has already spent years moving between the familiar and the polished.

Now he has a restaurant specifically designed to explore that territory.

What Happens When Bak Kut Teh Meets Béarnaise

One of the clearest examples arrived in 2026.

For Singapore's National Day, Seow created a menu at Eden that took recognisable local dishes and rebuilt them through contemporary techniques and presentation.

Bak kut teh became slow-braised pork ribs accompanied by garlic confit Béarnaise and crispy cuttlefish.

Singapore chilli crab was paired with kataifi pastry and ikura.

Assam fish appeared with monkfish cheeks.

Beef rendang was transformed into a Parmentier with Wagyu beef, potato mousseline and toasted coconut.

These are not dishes attempting to disguise where they came from.

Quite the opposite.

The familiar flavour is the anchor.

The technique changes around it.

That distinction is important.

Modern Asian cooking can sometimes become so concerned with reinvention that the original dish becomes almost unrecognisable. Seow's approach appears more interested in retaining the emotional reference point.

You should still know what you are eating.

The surprise comes from how it arrives.

Old-School Discipline, Modern Food

There is something decidedly traditional about Seow's attitude toward kitchens.

Experience matters.

Consistency matters.

Technique matters.

The plate needs to leave the pass correctly.

But what reaches the diner does not necessarily look traditional at all.

That tension has become one of the defining characteristics of his cooking.

The discipline is old-school.

The food does not have to be.

French technique can sit beside sambal.

A classic sauce can accompany bak kut teh.

A fine-dining ingredient can be combined with something deeply familiar from a Singaporean hawker table.

Nothing needs to remain inside the category where it began.

Eric Seow Has Been on Both Sides of the Kitchen Door

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Eric Seow is not any individual dish.

It is perspective.

He has worked as the chef inside major hotels.

He has been responsible for large and varied culinary operations.

And then he has experienced the restaurant from the owner's side, where the distance between cooking and business disappears almost completely.

Now he is back.

That makes his current chapter at Pullman Singapore Orchard particularly interesting.

He is not simply a hotel chef executing the requirements of a hotel restaurant.

He is someone who has learned what happens when the restaurant itself becomes your responsibility.

That experience tends to strip away a lot of unnecessary thinking.

A plate has to work.

A diner has to want to eat it.

And when the food reaches the table, however sophisticated the technique behind it may be, it still has one fairly simple job.

It needs to be good.