SINGAPORE – Noksu, a 15-seat restaurant located in a New York subway station, has a new executive chef. Singaporean Ng Jing Wen, 30, formerly its chef de cuisine, took over the reins from Korean chef Dae Kim in September 2025. 

With a Michelin star on its mantle, expectations are high. And a seat at the table is not easy to come by – even Grammy-nominated girl group Katseye reportedly had trouble securing a last-minute booking. 

But Ng is taking it all in her stride. She plans to steer the restaurant in a more contemporary Asian direction. That could mean curries from India and spices from Thailand, as well as Singaporean ingredients like candlenut and soya sauce. The goal, she says, is to “take diners all over the world”.

Getting to where she is has been quite a journey too, one that started in the living room of her parents’ Opera Estate terrace house.

“When I came home from secondary school, I’d turn on the TV and watch MasterChef Australia, or Jamie Oliver, or one of those cooking competition shows. And I’d think, okay, that looks fun,” says the former Changkat Changi Secondary School student.

Her first taste of kitchen life was cooking pasta with store-bought sauce and baking for her friends.

“They’d call me the baker and gas me up, and it made me think that this was something I could actually be good at, and that maybe I should pursue it,” says the self-professed academic underachiever, the second of four children of a retiree and a regional manager for a German glue company. 

In 2010, her mother opened a cafe in Raffles Place selling fried rice and curry. While Ng was not allowed to touch the food, she entertained herself by decorating the space and soaking in the adrenaline of the kitchen.

That decided it for her; she told her parents she wanted to be a chef. Initially, her declaration was met with scepticism. They worried that she would have “no life”, that she was not going to make a lot of money, that she would have to tough it...