COMO Dempsey - a new retail and food destination at Dempsey

(Updated August 2017) It seems like it was not so long ago when there was a report that COMO Lifestyle had won a tender to develop two blocks at the Dempsey dining and retail zone of Tanglin Village. According to an article on 15 December 2015 in the TODAY newspaper, COMO Lifestyle is a subsidiary of the Club 21, whose ventures include fashion outlets of the same name, COMO Hotels and Resorts and Culina, our favourite bistro and food shop at Dempsey. Well, the months have zoomed by and we can now see COMO Dempsey rising out of the ashes of the old dreaded CMPB buildings.

According to their website, “COMO Dempsey is a lifestyle destination that nurtures and cultivates creativity in fashion, food, directional design and new concepts.” From what we could see there are basically two components – a retail store (Dover Street Market Singapore) and a food cluster made up of four restaurants and a food emporium (COMO Marketplace). As we don’t really like shopping but love eating, we were only interested in the restaurants.

The four planned restaurants are now operational – Candlenut, Ippoh Tempura Bar, Dempsey Cookhouse and Como Cuisine.

Candlenut Peranakan restaurant is said to be the only Michelin Star Peranakan restaurant in the world, it received its one star in the 2016 inaugural Singapore Michelin Guide. You can read about our experience at Candlenut Dempsey here.

Ippoh Tempura Bar is the other restaurant that has been operational since late 2016. Ippoh is Osaka’s oldest premium tempura restaurant. The Dempsey restaurant is their first outlet in South-East Asia. You can read about our experience at Ippoh here.

In early March 2017, DEMPSEY Cookhouse and Bar by Jean-Georges Vongerichten started operations. Prior to that, the last occasions that we saw COMO Cuisine and Jean Georges in the same location were at the Paddock Club during the Singapore Formula One GP races. They each had their separate restaurants in the hospitality areas. What we can remember is that the Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant was the best of the many F&B offerings at the F1 weekend. You can read about our brunch at DEMPSEY Cookhouse and Bar here.

Como Cuisine is the last of the four restaurants and finally opened around July 2017 to complete the entire Como Dempsey concept. It is serves “refined and contemporary fare”. Read about our lunch at Como Cuisine here.