In the ever-evolving stratosphere of minute repeaters and tourbillons, the task of standing out can be a tall one. Maisons take turns engaging each other in a horological arms race, each vying to see who can pack the most complications into ever-thinner cases while chasing increasingly impressive specifications. But whatever happened to the humble ol' hour and minute hand? The following edit of watches—most of them unveiled during the annual harvest that is Watches and Wonders 2026—is proof that you don't need grand complications to draw eyes. Sometimes, thoughtful design and impeccable proportions are more than enough. At the very least, they certainly caught our eye.
The gold alloy and black skeletonised dial combo is hard to beat, and Panerai knows that. What may be the best-looking watch to come out of their Watches and Wonders unveiling also happens to be their most technically impressive. The PAM01631 features a movement capable of running for an entire month on a single wind thanks to a series of four mainspring barrels coiled tightly within.
When it comes to Jaeger-LeCoultre, the mind naturally goes to leather straps and rectangular cases. Sporty, fully integrated bracelet watches are few and far between in the Maison's illustrious catalogue, especially when stacked against its iconic Reverso line. But they've managed to put together a collection here that seamlessly combines vintage elegance with modern utility in its latest Master Control Chronometre collection.
The Tudor Royal displays a masterclass in carefully considered colours and proportions. Aside from this warm steel and yellow gold combination, they've released an array of dial colours (salmon, light blue, silver, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and more) across a selection of 30, 36, and 40mm-sized dials.
Plus, the Tudor Royal resembles a certain other crown-bearing collection of watches at a pretty attractive price point.
The Sakura-Wakaba SBGH376 quite literally catches the eye. Its handcrafted dial collaborates with 18K yellow gold to convey the transient beauty of cherry blossom meeting fresh green leaves. Gold and green tones emerge through a delicate crisscross texture, illuminating the dial with an impressively noble aura.
Building upon the movement crafted in the late '40s for an observatory chronometry competition, the calibre 135 is rehoused in a modern body with a three-part dial design. Taking centre stage is a bloodstone disc of green jasper flecked with natural red inclusions, meaning no one piece is like the other. A small-seconds mother-of-pearl subdial and an outer ring of brick-pattern guilloché rounds out this beautiful love letter to high-end horology.
At a glance, this one looks just like another safe addition to H. Moser & Cie's seemingly endless line of faceless watches. But look closer, and you'll find two mini hands at 6 and 9 o'clock. The former tells the seconds, while the latter to tell its power reserve. But wait, look even closer: there's a mini central hand peeking from under the main hands, which tells the month—one o’clock for January, two o'clock for February, and so on. Subtly audacious and creative!
The Superleggera stands out by defying the J12's unisex appeal—it's sharper and more technical with a harder edge than the collection's usual polish. Matte black ceramic is paired with black-coated steel for a stealthy look. A satin-finished hardened steel insert is set over a blackened steel base, cut with tightly machined gouges that create real depth.
Born during the Roaring Twenties—sleek curves, geometric shapes, Arabic numerals and all—the Historiques American 1921 wasn't subtle then, and it certainly isn't subtle now. Its distinctive 45-degree-rotated dial and unconventional crown placement at 3 o'clock are playful yet practical—a reminder that innovation is not exclusive to modern times.
You probably didn't need much convincing, but what you're looking at is a space watch. With its white zirconium oxide ceramic and subtle blue accents, IWC's debut venture into the territory of stars looks like an extension of the spacesuit itself. But the bezel is where the watch earns its keep: it rotates and switches between power-winding and time-setting for ease of astronauts' use.
Featuring a black obsidian dial framed by yellow gold, you won't find another watch that shines and reflects light the way this Santos-Dumont does. But the real story here is the introduction of Cartier's newest bracelet. 394 rice beads form a silky mesh that moulds and drapes the wrist with a flexibility that's unmatched in the Maison's catalogue.
Photography: Jaya Khidir
Photography Assistant: Goh Chiang Yang
Stylist: Asri Jasman and Elliot Tan
Edit: Elliot Tan
It’s a typical frat party. As beer pong ends, the winner comes around the table to offer his friend, Benny, a consolatory dap. The light dramatically dims around the latter as the moment plays out in slow-motion. His gaze shifts from the hand extended towards him to his own.
Facial expression shifting from dread to determination, dubstep in the background, he swings forward too eagerly and completely messes up the gesture. The recipient is clearly confused, but Benny doubles down by pulling him in, then attempts to play it off with a well-meaning shoulder punch.
The palpable awkwardness of the mutually aware error left unacknowledged is delicious. The scene is one of many closeted college experiences that Benito Skinner comedically retells in his Amazon Prime series, Overcompensating. The title pretty much spells out the premise of trying too hard.
It’s barely the first time Skinner exaggerates playing it straight, in more ways than one. On YouTube, Benjamin Van Woostersen AKA Benny Brohana teaches you How To Talk Like A Bro. The caricature peppers his speech with unnecessary chuckles among other quintessential teen male mannerisms. That was eight years ago.
Thousands of BennyDrama7 Internet skits later, the 32-year-old now occupies a bigger screen. To date, he considers the show his most creatively fulfilling endeavour. “It’s so special to me, and also very vulnerable,” he speaks openly over video call, “It would be hard not to tie negativity towards it to my self-worth, because it’s so personal.”
The semi-autobiographical story intentionally retains some parallels while changing up other details. Intriguingly, deciding the main character’s name was never a question. “It’s funny, because most people call me Ben,” he reveals with an upturned smile on the subtle difference, “I had previously only done character work or impressions, so if this was my first emotional statement, it was gonna be honest.”
Skinner tries to write every episode as if it was the only season someone watched. Would it hook them? Would they feel everything that he would want them to feel? “I want every second to count. If people are giving you their time, it’s a—” he breaks to laugh at the unlikely severity of the word, “duty to make sure that they enjoy it.”
Writing is surprisingly—or not—the more challenging bit of the job. It’s the first chance he gets to truly process the emotions rooted in a significant segment of his yesteryear. He chuckles at how he couldn’t stop writing over Christmas because he simply couldn’t enjoy the day until he was satisfied with his progress.
Writing is also the most rewarding. “I love these scripts so much,” he enthuses, taking healthy pride in his work, “One of my favourite experiences creatively over the past year was just sitting down and hearing all these actors that I love so much deliver the lines for the first time at a table read. That was so amazing.”
While the hours are equally gruelling for acting, Skinner describes it as the fun discovery of what a scene could be. It is living out his dream, even if his body no longer knows what time of day it is after shooting. The reality of immortalising the highs and lows of his college life in mass media only hit him when he was reenacting them on camera.
Highs include actually stealing a golf cart and driving it on the open road the first night he met his friend Nora, on whom the character Carmen Neil is based. On the flipside, rapping Nicki Minaj to a group of straight guys at pregame... to crickets. “They just didn’t get it, I guess,” he shrugs, before switching to flair, “because I thought I did a gorgeous job.”
It was a chapter of reckless abandonment that only the currency of youth could afford. An especially refreshing freedom when it stemmed from living in the same town up till then. The clean slate poses two options: Who do you pretend you are? Or do you finally become yourself? Skinner conceded to the latter, albeit gradually.
Growing up in Idaho with no background or connection to the entertainment industry, the sheer opportunity now is very much a pinch-me situation. Sure, he studied film at Georgetown, but it’s no NYU or USC. Rather, the Internet provided the training ground.
“It was such a great place for me to discover my comedic voice and to learn how to perform and finally get all these things that I had hidden so deep within myself out of my system. Feeling like everyone could access it, that’s what I really wanted,” Skinner explains.
“It allowed me to incubate so many ideas. Hailee was one of the first characters I ever did. Now, she’s a character on Overcompensating, played brilliantly by [the mononym comedian] Holmes. I had so much time to explore that character, to then give her away to someone that I think is so genius is the greatest gift.”
The actor lists Issa Rae, Quinta Bronson, Ilana Glazer, and Abbi Jacobson as some of his heroes of the space. SNL definitely crossed his mind, and he did audition for other roles when he was younger and, in his hindsight, not quite ready.
Yet, the path was somewhat laid out for him. He had already written the pilot, and was touring a standup with similar themes and tonality. His ticket to Hollywood? Precisely that online portfolio of crazy sketches.
“I felt really proud pitching the show in meetings like, This many people have engaged with my comedy, and I can prove it. There’s an audience here, and I built it by myself. It gave me the confidence to think that I could make a show. I would have regretted it for a long time if I didn’t,” he expresses.
There is a shorter lead time to the second season, but Skinner was able to complete it faster now that he was familiar with every actor. It was easy to jump back into the world because it was established, and the vision was clear to him long prior. Plus, simultaneously wearing the creator/producer hat acquaints him with issues that would arise and how best to shoot within allocated budgets.
This time, he’s supervising the music too. Charli XCX—who famously made a cameo on the first season after he pitched it to her while drunk at a party; the lore’s on the web—is still producing. “She is ultimately very busy, so we didn’t need to force her to go through Zooms for four hours. I was like, you’re putting out an album. What was so great is that she created the team that we have so that all stays the same.”
Curating playlists and the right needle drops are another facet of the job that Skinner sincerely enjoys. In fact, he writes songs he wants for the scene into the scripts. The power of music to tell a narrative is more evident to him after the first season, but his passion for it came organically.
Besides having a cellist mother who puts on a concert every time he returns home for the holidays, Skinner played the piano as a child. “I think if I got to do Britney on the piano, I would have really sat with it. Um, Hot Cross Buns and Silent Night weren’t really doing it for me in a way that maybe like a Disney booklet could have,” he shares, half-deadpan.
And then came his checkered past as a radio DJ in college. Which, fun fact, marked the debut of his Benny Drama moniker. “I’ve certainly been obsessed with pop music my whole life,” he feigns a haughty air, “I know a lot of people judge pop music and I think they’re wrong, and I think they’re pathetic.”
An early internship at Capitol Records lends to the possibility that he could’ve pursued a music-related career, so he’s thankful for this level of involvement in his work. “The only thing that’s semi-ruined for me is I can sometimes hear network notes when I watch TV. I know when there’s a branded spot, and they’re really good at it,” Skinner mentions one product placement that viewers have not noticed to this day, and instead misguessed others that were but nostalgic world-building elements.
A world that incidentally perpetuates a bunch of actors in their 30s playing college kids. “Oh, I’m so happy to be a part of this, let me tell you,” he jests, “No, it’s not something I thought that much about because I came up in an era of American Pie and Mean Girls. My favourite movie as a kid was Grease. I was used to people who were older playing younger.”
Skinner isn’t implying he looks the age; he just wants you to roll with it. It lets the actors take on the emotional challenges of that particular period in their life and be in on the joke, rather than having youngins doing the same on screen and seeming the butt of it. “I wrote this when I was 24, 25, ok, and TV takes a really long time. That’s all I’ll say,” he says in mock-defensiveness.
The new season promises more emotional scenes and physical comedy. The actor alludes to stunts and a harness. He was 50 feet up at one point, which doesn’t sound that high, but he swears it’s actually so high that he was so [insert your go-to expletive] scared.
It’s the joy of performing that counters plausible pigeonholing. If anything, Skinner is vocal about what he wants to try, and is happy to just, well, do it. As much as he is to run around Brooklyn all day in a wig like he used to. PS: If he had the energy, that is. PPS: Realtor Deliverance Richards is the persona he would bring out of retirement in that scenario.
He is also recently learning to let go of ingrained perfectionism. “Oh my God, the format of a photo will just make me sick to my stomach,” he exhales, “But I would be bad at my job if I tried to control every aspect. It wouldn’t be a great environment, which is about collaboration. Of course, I think some things will work, but I allow myself to be surprised and focus on making the most fun show possible.”
“I never thought I would be able to do this, so the fact that it’s real, I don’t know if I processed it, and I probably won’t for a long time,” he admits. For someone who is a little more subdued than his content may lead you to believe, Skinner still finds himself overcompensating every so often.
“It’s really hard for me to feel like I could do less. We’re all told so many times a day all the ways we’re inadequate, and they naturally get stuck in your head. It is cathartic for me to write about it and forgive myself when I was doing it a lot. Understanding that some wounds you carry into adulthood, and having more tenderness when you see them because you know they’re not your fault.”
If the writing room is where he post-evaluates, on set is where he gets his giggles. “I’m getting paid to do this,” he remarks at the privilege of having laughter as a constant in his life—a rarity to most. “It’s a really terrifying time to be alive, and if we can give people a little break for eight episodes of TV that they can watch with their friend in bed, that feels like success to me.”
Photography: Jared Kocka at 11TH HOUSE AGENCY
Creative Direction: Asri Jasman
Art Direction: Joan Tai
Styling: Julian Fetterman
Hair: Ben Jones at THE ONLY AGENCY
Makeup: Charlie Riddle at THE WALL GROUP
Set Designer: Véné Castte
Executive Producer: Alex T
Producer: Nika Bregvadze at KYNN PRODUCTIONS
1st Assistant: Alexei Topounov
2nd Assistant: Hector Adalid
Styling Assistants: Lucas Randall and Vitória Diiulio
Makeup Assistant: Kayleigh D' Anne
Set Design Assistant: Atanasio Seferlis Jr.
Studio and Equipment: Yello Studio NYC
PR: imPRint
Look. It's an inevitability that alternative energy sources are the way to go and it's great that car companies are leaning into it. Porsche, which is known for its 911, has for two decades, turned the automobile world on its head with the introduction of the SUV that's also a Porsche, finally adds an electric version to its Cayenne range.
The Cayenne Electric has an 800-volt architecture and a 113kWh battery built into the car's structure rather than being bolted beneath it. Charging tops out at 400kW, enough for a 10-to-80 per cent top-up in under 16 minutes. The battery can be split into two 400-volt banks for dual charging and braking recuperation hits 600kW, borrowed in spirit from Porsche's Formula E programme.
Expect three variants. The entry Cayenne Electric makes 325kW (435hp) and 835Nm, hits 100km/h in 4.8 seconds and tops out at 230km/h, with a WLTP range of 642km. Then, you have the Cayenne S Electric with 490kW (657hp), a 3.8-second sprint and 653km of range. Coming in at the top, is the Cayenne Turbo Electric that puts down 850kW (1,140hp) and 1,500Nm, enough for 100km/h in 2.5 seconds and a 260km/h top speed.
Cayenne Electric models arrive with their own adaptive air suspension with PASM, optional rear-axle steering, and the Active Ride system on S and Turbo variants, which allows for wheel loads to keep the body level under acceleration, braking and cornering. There are the standard Digital Key, Automatic Parking with 2D Surround View, a BOSE Surround Sound system. You can opt for a personalised combo, like Lavender and Delgada Green leather options or Club Leather finishes. Want the option of a panoramic roof? That's possible. Want one with a cabin mood-lit on command? Go for the electro-chromatic Variable Light Control.
If you're after something with more attitude, there's the Cayenne Coupé Electric, its roofline borrowing a flyline from the 911 and its drag coefficient dropping to 0.23 against the SUV's 0.25. With a standard Sport Chrono package, rear-axle steering and a fixed panoramic roof, the Coupé Electric will manage 1,347 litres of boot space plus a 90-litre front trunk.
The Cayenne Electric range is available to order in Singapore from SGD 372,788 before COE.
I’m in London for Young Sherlock, and Sherlock is everywhere.
At the gift shop beneath the glass-and-steel canopy of the British Museum’s Great Court, his likeness sits alongside replicas of the Vapheio Cups, imitation Lewis Chessman sets and Hoji Frog postcards. A short walk away is HELLO LOVE, a creative space on Southampton Row, where a GBP28 toy version of the detective (complete with a working magnifying glass) shares shelf space with Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Frida Kahlo, William Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth II. A man who never lived has become one of the most recognisable figures in the world, easily travelling across time, built on a handful of enduring symbols that every generation can reinterpret, reshape and claim as its own. That is why, more than a century after his debut in A Study in Scarlet (1887), we are still finding new ways to tell his story, most recently in the eight-episode Prime Video series Young Sherlock, which reimagines him as a 19-year-old at Oxford, before the pipe, before Baker Street, before the legend.
“It is fascinating to track how the idea and image of Sherlock Holmes has captured imaginations for so long, in so many different formats and all over the world,” says Professor Hugo Frey, University of Chichester, who was recently awarded an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award to research a leading Conan Doyle collection.
The scholar of visual and popular culture points out that a simple set of symbols, including a deerstalker hat, a pipe, a violin and Baker Street, has made the character of Holmes instantly recognisable. “A little like superhero comics. Think Batman and his mask. It also means that each generation can reinterpret these core signs,” he says in an email interview with Esquire India.
“Even though he never lived, people still recognise his silhouette instantly—the hat, the pipe, the curiosity—which says a lot about how powerful the character is,” says Jane Hutchison, founder and creative director of HELLO LOVE, who believes Holmes belongs alongside figures like Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth II, given his enduring influence on literature, storytelling and popular culture.
Beyond the core signs that make Holmes a global shorthand for the archetypal detective, Young Sherlock, created and showrun by Matthew Parkhill and executive produced by Guy Ritchie, explores who he was before he became the cynical genius we know. This speaks to our growing need to understand what makes people what they are, instead of seeing them as just figures with fixed, binary personalities.
What Hero Fiennes Tiffin, the actor who plays the young Sherlock, found relatable about the fictional luminary is “the fact that when we’re young, we all think we are going to be the one to make the world a better place. And sometimes when the hardships of life hit, people might naturally become a little bit more cynical. That attitude of ‘I’ll be the one to make the world a better place’ is something we often sadly lose as life goes on.”
Mycroft (Sherlock’s elder brother, portrayed by Max Irons) in this series, for instance, reflects that same youthful openness. He can still question his loyalty to the Crown and isn’t yet blinded by duty.
“For Mycroft, it’s an understanding that a lot of people spend time trying to be things they’re not, trying to be what society tells them they should be, what a man should be, what a woman should be, how a child should behave. The truth is—and I think we’re starting to understand this more and more—that we are all different. It’s why we’re a successful species. We’re all different, and the sooner that we can be at peace with who we are, the sooner we will find peace in our hearts,” Irons tells Esquire India.
Young Sherlock has clearly struck a chord. It debuted with a 100 per cent Rotten Tomatoes score (now at 83), broke records for the most-watched Prime Video trailer and currently sits at #2 globally on the platform.
Part of its popularity has to do, of course, with our enduring love for crime thrillers. But just as much, it’s about relatability. We’re drawn to characters we see ourselves in, and this version of Holmes, shaped as much by youthful audacity and vulnerability as by intellect, feels closer than ever.
“We see him at an age where he’s at school. I definitely think it’s a lot more relatable than being a detective for hire—not many of us can relate to that,” says Fiennes Tiffin.
“He becomes a bit more cynical later in life, and I think when you experience the hardships of life, that youthful positivity and enthusiasm is likely to wear off. That’s quite relatable as well. We have made him a little bit different, but I think Conan Doyle has just created such a brilliant character that he can be moulded accordingly.”
Another reason that Holmes continues to endure despite innumerable retellings is because of the richness of the world he inhabits and the multifaceted characters that surround him. Their intricate natures allow for multiple interpretations, thereby securing longevity in the public consciousness over eras, but also giving us scope to see ourselves in them throughout our lives, from the naiveté of youth to the astuteness (and sometimes disenchantment) of old age. The darker the character, the more at home we feel because somewhere, we understand what shapes such a person. Which is why, through all retellings, we are slightly in love with James Moriarty despite him being one of fiction’s greatest villains.
In the world of Young Sherlock, Holmes and Moriarty are not just friends but comrades-in-arms who regularly save each other from bullets, prison and falling prey to their own self-defeating beliefs. The heart of the plot may be the conspiracy surrounding the disappearance of Chinese princess Gulun Shou’an (played to perfection by Zine Tseng), but truly, the soul of the show is “why one man chooses darkness and the other doesn’t, and also how easy it is to trip over into the dark part,” as Parkhill tells us.
Is it nature or nurture? Is the darkness inbuilt in Moriarty, or is it a result of the things that have happened to him? That’s a question that has no neat answer; one that everyone has to discover for themselves.
For Dónal Finn, who plays a young Moriarty in the show, the answer to why we are drawn to morally complex characters is simpler—we could all do with a spoonful of that spirit of wildness. “I think we cannot help but be drawn to people who just see the risks and do it anyway—and do it with a sense of ease, which I think comes very easily to Moriarty. He’s not unaware of danger, but I think there is also a blind optimism to choosing chaos and believing that you’re going to come out the other side of it unscratched,” he says with a laugh.
But does evil exist without good? A shadow requires light, after all. That is another subtext that the series has allowed the creators to explore. Parkhill and Finn compare the relationship between Holmes and Moriarty to the collision of particles in a hadron collider—each sparking the other’s essence, birthing a whole new world. “The idea is that if Sherlock hadn’t met Moriarty, he wouldn’t have become Sherlock. I think it’s an action-reaction; the two of them colliding sets them off in different directions. I always think that if Moriarty hadn’t met Sherlock, he’d probably be a junior professor somewhere at Oxford,” says Parkhill.
It is testimony to Doyle’s remarkable world-building and character creation that, after more than a century since Moriarty’s debut in 1893’s The Final Problem (it being one of only two direct appearances he makes in the original works), we are still discovering him, intellectually and philosophically. And perhaps, another reason why Doyle’s hero remains so pivotal in fiction—he is a question to which there is no easy answer.
Originally published on Esquire IN
Take a scroll through social media and look up The Odyssey. Amidst the memes and BTS insights into Christopher Nolan's impressive work without CGI, you'll find a flurry of reels and edits glorifying all the aura-farming Agamemnon does in the film.
If you're unfamiliar with the term, we'll let Benny Safdie, who plays the king of Mycenae himself, explain: "It means taking ownership of a room with just your presence."
Admittedly, when the gates of Troy opened, and Agamemnon towered above his soldiers as they charged into the teeth of certain death and destruction, it was pretty badass. It also doesn't help that his armour design is easily one of the best-looking iterations of Mycenaean Greek armour portrayed on screen.
But even though Safdie accomplished his duty of aura-farming, the decision to cast him as Agamemnon was a puzzling one (almost as much as Nolan's decision to rotate Cyclops' eye vertically in a mildly suggestive manner).
Apart from Safdie's towering height of 185cm, there is nothing about the actor slash filmmaker that makes you think he'd be capable of pulling off one of the most powerful rulers in Greek mythology. The character's silent yet intimidating disposition contrasts massively with his usual neurotic indie-film persona.
Agamemnon may have stood on the front line at the gates of Troy, but we never see him raise his sword or even lift a finger in combat. He doesn't lead the charge. Instead, he walks behind his men, letting them fight the wars that he waged to satiate his own selfish ambitions.
He sacrifices not only his men, but his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, to the goddess Artemis in order to be granted passage into Troy. Time and time again, we see him cower behind the backs of others, defying the very perception we form from the imposing presence he curates for himself.
It's no coincidence that we never see Safdie's face for most of the film until his demise in the royal bath, when his throat is slit by his wife for the very act that epitomised his cowardice—sacrificing their daughter. When we finally do see his face, it belongs to a scared man, naked, with nothing to hide behind.
Even when we hear his voice as Odysseus summons him in the underworld, we're caught off guard. We're prepared for something deep and vigorous. But what comes out is a voice that is shaky and delicate, nothing as imposing as his stature would suggest.
Not to imply that Safdie is a cowardly loser, but rather, because of his history playing nervous and eccentric characters, his casting serves as a parallel for Agamemnon's depth. Nolan is breaking the fourth wall in a way that feels unprecedented in modern cinema: by drawing from real-life context and applying it to his casting decisions.
Just look at his choice of casting Travis Scott as a bard who sings tales of Odysseus' journey—he is likening ancient oral poetry to modern rap. Similarly, he tries to convey to audiences a message about Agamemnon and false leaders with the casting of Benny Safdie.
Behind that menacing armour is simply an unscrupulous coward, not a bronzed, chiselled king capable of splitting a log with his bare hands. Try as he might to compensate for his lack of a spine with cool armour and a polished, gold-plated one that hangs off his helmet. But all this, much like his demeanour and aura-farming, is ultimately just for show.
Uh-oh. Rick Moranis is missing.
It is the night before the Spaceballs sequel panel at San Diego Comic-Con, and the beloved 73-year-old actor—who hasn’t appeared onscreen in a movie for nearly 30 years—is preparing for his long-awaited comeback. When the sequel, subtitled The New One, debuts in April 2027, Moranis will reprise his role as the haughty, dastardly Dark Helmet, a Darth Vader wannabe who first menaced the screen in Mel Brooks’s now-classic 1987 Star Wars spoof. At Comic-Con, the world is finally going to meet him again, for the first time, for the last time. Or something like that.
Except, there’s a problem. “Serious question. Does anyone know where Rick is?” announces Bianca Espirito-Santo Swartz (more on that coincidental last name later), who is the producer of the live event. For the last hour, she has been wrangling the actors, comedians, writers, and producers onto the Comic-Con stage to practise the beats of the presentation. She stands on the platform at the head of the room with a giant version of her looming on the screen behind her, very Citizen Kane-like. The mic booms her voice out over the 6,500 mostly empty seats of Hall H, and the clock ticks toward 10pm, when they’ll have to clear out for the next Q&A’s walk-through.
Josh Gad, the tirelessly driving force behind the Spaceballs resurgence, sits onstage behind her, momentarily looking as nervous as his Frozen alter ego Olaf under a hamburger lamp. Did they really just lose the legend he spent years recruiting back to the screen? At stake in this Comic-Con event is the future of the Spaceballs extended universe, the “Almighty Schwartz Saga,” an 11-phase, century-long series of movies, TV shows, and spin-offs. (Sure, that seems like only a joke, but so did the idea of a movie about sterile backrooms until it made a gajillion dollars.)
Next to Gad onstage sits Spaceballs 2 director Josh Greenbaum, the filmmaker behind Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, the R-rated talking-animal comedy Strays, and the upcoming tennis comedy The Dink. He appears less concerned about the disappearance of Moranis, like a weary parent who can no longer hear his own child screaming on the aeroplane. At the other end of the row of seats, co-writers Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez—who are sometimes referred to with the singular hybrid nickname “Danji”—exchange identical “I didn’t do it” expressions.
There is an empty chair for Moranis next to Keke Palmer, who stars as Destiny, a new character in the sequel, and Daphne Zuniga, who returns as the Leia parody Princess Vespa—now promoted to Queen Vespa. Both women sit quietly, glancing side to side as tensions momentarily rise and The Search for Rick begins.
Swartz had to preface her announcement with “serious question” because Moranis was last seen when they rehearsed a bit for the opening of the panel where he actually goes missing.
One of the last people to speak with Moranis before he vanished was... me. I walked with him as he explained the joke they were putting together. “I'm told that I'm going to be placed in the audience. They're going to introduce me and I'm not going to come out and they’re going to have to 'comb' the audience looking for me,” he said.
The plan was for Moranis to hide in plain sight, tucked in among the costumed attendees beneath his character’s oversized headgear. “I’m not in full costume, just whatever I'm wearing with the helmet. The dark helmet. The big thing,” Moranis tells me, holding his hands about two feet from either side of his head.
But as the joke unfolds there will actually be several Dark Helmets in the vicinity. “They first find one guy that's not me,” Moranis said. “Then a second one. The old comedy rules are three,” he says. “And the third one would be me. Then they'll take me up to the stage.”
The only problem is, to maintain the surprise he will need to already be under the closed face of the Dark Helmet when he secretly emerges from backstage, and then he would have to spend the entire opening sequence beneath it. He explains that there’s a bit of a sensory deprivation that comes from wearing that thing.
“It's a cone of silence,” Moranis says with a shrug. Those may be famous last words.
Here’s where I should pause to explain that the team behind Spaceballs 2 brought Esquire here to exclusively accompany them behind the scenes of the now-viral Comic-Con presentation, getting up close as they put it all together. This was, obviously, a huge mistake, because here we are: betraying them by revealing the one thing that went awry during the rehearsal. Typical clickbait-chasing media.
Spaceballs: The Rehearsal started on Thursday at a private cast and crew gathering at Morton’s steakhouse in San Diego’s Gaslamp District, the bustling home of Comic-Con that is overrun annually with thousands of costumed revellers and pop culture fanatics.
As I walk to the restaurant, I pass a pair of Trons, several He-Men and Skeletors, assorted Jokers, a flock of lightsaber-wielders, and the Scrooge & Marley pop-up shopfront where Johnny Depp had just appeared in old-man make-up and a top hat to convince other Johnny Depps to see his new Christmas movie Ebenezer.
Inside Morton’s, I am taken to a closed-door event where a screen welcomes the group of about 50 cast and crew members to Spaceballs: The Dinner. Everyone taking part in the panel is present except Moranis, who is meeting them at the convention centre later. Lewis Pullman, who is playing the son of Lone Starr (originated by his actual father, Bill Pullman), will arrive in San Diego the next day.
The rehearsal meal includes a themed menu and cocktail list, seen below. One of the libations, Spacebitch, takes its name either from Carrie Fisher’s infamous quote about Star Wars fans who thought Princess Leia was too tough, or an allusion to a female Mawg, the Chewbacca-like half-human, half-canine creatures who inhabit the Spaceballs universe.
Gad is playing one of these creatures, although he emphasises that he is not taking on the role of Barf, played in the first film by the late and much-missed John Candy. They aren’t saying more about the character, hoping to conjure the same kind of mystery that Marvel Studios generated around a certain Stranger Things actress and her still-uncertain role in the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
“We’re intentionally keeping it cryptic,” Gad says. “I’m the Sadie Sink of this movie.”
One of the first things Gad does when I arrive is explain his moustache, which suggests something in between Park Slope hipster and international diamond smuggler. “It’s for the new Ocean’s Eleven prequel,” he tells me with a shrug. “Every time I meet somebody I feel like I need to apologise.”
“I think you should tell people it's for Frozen 3 and just let them wonder why you had to change your look for an animated film,” says Spaceballs 2 director Greenbaum.
Gad runs with that idea: “I have to do it! They say it affects my voice,” he deadpans. “It really brings out the honesty when I say, ‘I like warm hugs.’”
As we all head off toward Hall H for the onstage rehearsal, co-writers Samit and Hernandez pile into the van with Gad, Greenbaum and Spaceballs 2 costume designer Trayce Gigi Field, who is there to supervise the dressing of the Spaceballs soldiers and the Dark Helmet apparatus for the planned Moranis introduction. Christine Batista, the co-head of Amazon/MGM’s global movies PR department, takes a moment to introduce me to the crowd. “Remember, he is a journalist, so what happens on this bus...”
“Doesn’t stay on this bus,” Samit finishes. “What’s the code word for ‘off the record?’” Hernandez asks.
“On the record: I love Josh Gad. Off the record: Not a fan,” Greenbaum says. “Off the record: I have still never seen the first Spaceballs. On the record: I've seen it a thousand times.”
“Serious question. Does anyone know where Rick is?”
Only two members of the core Spaceballs 2 cast are unable to attend the Comic-Con showcase. Bill Pullman is currently performing onstage in England in a production of The Cherry Orchard, although he sent a video message outside the Swan Theatre to the Hall H audience.
The other missing piece is Mel Brooks himself. Serious consideration was given to bringing Brooks to Comic-Con, but given that he just turned 100 years old on 28 June, the Spaceballs 2 team decided not to risk transporting him to San Diego and subjecting him to the onslaught of the world’s biggest fantasy convention.
They were equally careful with the comedy legend throughout the production. While Brooks does reprise his Yoda-like role of Yoghurt in the upcoming sequel, he was only required to read the lines in a recording booth, not dive around on set in a laser-sword battle while wearing gold makeup. “Part of the idea was we didn't want to kill a 99-year-old man. We really felt that was important,” Gad says.
There were a lot of chaperones at this particular prom, to make sure things don’t go off the rails too far. “I’m the Josh Gad wrangler,” jokes Jeb Brody, a producer on the film and head of film and TV at Imagine Entertainment. “My entire job is just to make sure he gets nothing he wants.”
When we arrive at the loading dock behind Hall H, we’re greeted by Kevin Salter, who serves as Brooks’ eyes and ears on the production. He has been Brooks’s longtime consigliere and producing partner at Brooksfilms Ltd. and keeps the centenarian filled in on the event’s progress. (Brooks likes to stay up all night and sleep during the day, he says.)
Brooks himself was eager to venture down to Comic-Con, Salter says, but had to be talked out of it. “You know, he doesn’t love being 100, but who does?” Salter says. “What I tell him is, ‘The alternative is... not being 100.”
It’s up to those around Brooks to keep this one-of-a-kind safe in his bubble, like a vintage, unopened Star Wars action figure. “We want to take care of him,” Salter says. “He's a living legend. It's like our job to say, ‘Hmm, maybe not.’ We want him on the red carpet [when the movie opens] in April.”
Also waiting on the Hall H loading dock when the gang arrives from dinner around 9:20pm is a man in a blue zip-up sweatshirt, khaki pants, and a grey cap. Rick Moranis has just flown in from his home in New York, and as Gad, Greenbaum, Samit, and Hernandez swarm him, he smiles like a mild-mannered uncle who has been recruited to join his nephews for an all-night road trip to Vegas.
“Are you exhausted?” Gad asks.
“This is well past your bedtime,” Greenbaum adds.
“Well, it is the middle of the night for me,” Moranis says. But he’s here. He’s game. It’s time to get started.
As the gang moves inside to the cavernous and largely empty Hall H, Daphne Zuniga halts in her heels. “Oh my God... What!?” the Queen Vespa actress says. “I’ve never been to this kind of thing before. Unbelievable.”
The group is met by Bianca Espirito-Santo Swartz, a veteran producer of live events who coordinated several Hall H presentations this year. She points out that there might be a cosmic coincidence at play: In Star Wars, the unseen presence that guides all life is called The Force, but in Spaceballs this supernatural entity is called The Schwartz.
The producer explains that her last name is actually spelt S-W-A-R-T-Z. “But then somebody messed up my credential and gave me a C-H. So The Schwartz is with us,” she says. Minutes later, she’s rallying the whole group: “...We're starting? Okay!”
Swartz outlines the opening revelation for Moranis. He gets beneath his huge mask and takes his seat, and the team walks through the rehearsal as Spaceballs soldiers literally comb the crowd with giant ACE combs in a callback to one of the first movie’s most famous gags. They find the first Dark Helmet doppelgänger—a bearded man with crossed eyes, then they hit upon the second, which turns out to be a young boy. (It’s actually Swartz’s teenage son, Lincoln, who won the part when he demonstrated a charismatic eyebrow arch he could do when the mask flipped up.)
“I was thinking about how this movie is multi-generational. Dads are going to want to bring their sons,” Swartz says. “So I had the helmet, and I was like, ‘Dude, put this on. Let's see what happens.’ Then he gave me the eyebrow when he lifted it up and I was like, this is basically bring-your-son-to-work, right? So then I pitched it like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. There's a little shrunken Rick, maybe.”
“Part of the idea was we didn't want to kill a 99-year-old man. We really felt that was important.”
As they walk through the revelation of Moranis, Swartz has to repeatedly advise the Spaceballers that they are combing too slowly. “It’s not a wedding march,” she says.
Samit walks with Gad to the stage and says Rick asked for a funny line to say when his mask flips up. He proposes that Moranis say he was reluctant to leave his chair after waiting in the 12-hour-plus line that most audience members must endure to get into Hall H.
As the team of Spaceballs combers reach Moranis, he flips up his mask and gestures at the other Dark Helmets: “Arrest those imposters!” From the stage, his co-stars ask him why he’s hiding out in the audience. “Do you know how long I waited for this seat?” he answers.
The rest of the cast arrays onstage, and several minutes pass as Swartz plays the role of moderator Kevin Smith, presenting the various videos and questions that will unspool during the presentation. As they near the rehearsal deadline of 10pm, she realises: Moranis is missing.
As Swartz calls out looking for him, the behind-the-scenes crew begins combing Hall H for real. That’s when the soft-spoken Moranis steps out from behind the black curtain that conceals one of the backstage doors. He thought they were going to rehearse his revelation one more time, and was waiting for someone to tell him where to go.
According to my audio recording, exactly three minutes and two seconds had passed from when he said his line and charged off behind the curtain. Moranis was missing for about the runtime of Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” although maybe those three minutes felt amplified by the three decades we’ve lived without him.
Okay, so he wasn’t really lost for long. But this story needed some drama, so I leaned into it. Like I said, you can’t really trust the media. I warned you this was clickbait from the start.
The next afternoon, it’s showtime. Friday is when Comic-Con kicks into high gear, and Hall H overflows with people. Thousands pack the room to capacity, making the once cavernous-seeming space seem claustrophobic.
Moranis was introspective on the ride from the hotel to the convention centre. “After not doing it for as many years as I have, and therefore living as a civilian and really connecting with the audience as people... it's really moving to me to see them again,” he says.
Greenbaum sat beside him in the back of the van, offering reassurance that they are going to love seeing him. “It's a lot better than disappointing them!” Moranis says.
When we get to the convention centre, everyone piles out of the vehicle—except for Moranis, who lingers in the back seat alone. “All right, good luck everybody. I'll just be in here!” he calls out.
“Our bit is actually real,” Greenbaum jokes. “We’ll be like, ‘He's still in the van!’”
As the Spaceballs 2 group assembles in the Comic-Con greenroom above Hall H, Gad reveals he has only one regret: not capitalising on Comic-Con’s most perplexingly viral moment: Johnny Depp’s Scrooge antics. “I begged them to let me come out as Ebenezer,” Gad tells me. “Can you imagine? The hair, the hat...” he says, stooping over and squinting as he gnashes his teeth. “Just walking around muttering, ‘Bah, humbug!’”
One obstacle to hijacking Ebenezer for the Spaceballs 2 panel was simply finding a makeup artist on short notice who could spoof Depp’s look. Then there was the risk of distracting from their actual purpose here at Comic-Con: hyping their own movie. Jeb Brody, the self-proclaimed “Josh Gad wrangler,” strikes again—presumably with other Spaceballs stakeholders who talked the star out of it.
Even in this holding area, Moranis is already getting a sense of the excitement building around him. Among the first people to have their socks knocked off is Clerks and Mallrats filmmaker Kevin Smith, the moderator of the presentation and a Comic-Con stalwart for decades. “I came for the panel because of Rick Moranis,” he tells me, invoking the name of the actor’s beer-swilling duo with Dave Thomas from their SCTV days. “Jay and Silent Bob doesn't exist without Bob and Doug McKenzie. Having him at Comic-Con is like having geek royalty here. You're talking about a dude who, for most of us, was there as we grew up. He was part of the fabric of the culture since we were kids.”
And then Moranis went away, stepping back from acting after 1996 to raise his two children. He decided to take a break and focus on his young son and daughter after his wife, make-up artist Ann Belsky, passed away from cancer in 1991. He has always said that his intended hiatus just became a longer and longer break. He still recorded some music and occasionally did voice acting performances, but another onscreen role never happened. “Going away is completely understandable,” Smith says. “He wanted to live a real life. But him coming back is a thing to celebrate. It's crazy that I get to be there for a moment when he jumps up on stage.”
Finally, it’s time. The Spaceballs 2 team all sit at a roundtable to walk through the presentation with Swartz one last time before descending to the dark backstage area. In the elevator, a 13-year-old boy (my son) asks Moranis: “Are you nervous?” The question makes me nervous: Don’t make this legend uncertain now, kid.
But Moranis considers it and responds kindly. “You know, I just don’t think about it that way,” he says, before adding reassuringly: “But it’s a good question.”
Then it happened: Spaceballs—The Comic-Con Panel. By now, the videos have gone viral, the photos have circulated everywhere, and those who are longing for the return of Rick Moranis and Mel Brooks are assured that this movie will bring us heavy-duty doses of both.
The reaction from the Hall H crowd when Moranis flipped up his mask was so deafening that it drowned out his cry of “Arrest those imposters!” The cheers remained so loud and sustained that he abandoned his planned joke and just darted back behind the curtain to reemerge with his castmates onstage.
When the panel concluded, there was still more to do. Gad and the gang were heading to a signing area to meet with fans and dole out autographs. But the heavy lifting of the presentation was done. I ran into Jeb Brody in the greenroom and asked for his thoughts on how it turned out. “Disaster,” he said. “It makes me feel like we made a big mistake.”
(No one associated with Spaceballs 2 is permitted to give a serious answer until first delivering a joke answer.) “No, I thought it was beautiful,” Brody added.”I thought the audience was completely connected, not only to Mel but all of the reasons this movie has been hanging around in people's psyches. Today was about letting people know that's what we're doing. We're poking fun at nostalgia.”
With Moranis’ comeback, he adds, they’re also embracing nostalgia, and giving people back a performer that they’ve missed for a long, long time. “Part of this was to make sure that Rick knew we weren't the only people who love him,” Brody says. “We wanted that moment at Comic-Con. We've been talking about it forever: Rick walking in and feeling the house come down and embrace him for all that he gave them.”
He said the actor is too humble to realise what he means to people. “I think he's learning it,” Brody says. “But he doesn't want to be an icon. He doesn't want to be a hero. My sense is he wants to be funny. He wanted to be a normal person. And he wants to tell good jokes and make good work.”
Afterwards, as we walked away from the backstage area, leaving Hall H behind, I asked Moranis how he felt after that outpouring at Comic-Con. Moranis shook his head, and his gentle smile once again emerged. All he said was: “I don’t know what planet I’m on.”
Originally published on Esquire US
Since it released worldwide a couple of weeks ago, Christopher Nolan's highly-anticipated adaptation of The Odyssey has caused a lot of conversation. Generally, the critical consensus has been overwhelmingly positive: historian and The Rest is History co-host Tom Holland (confusing, we know) called it "by some way the best cinematic adaptation of a Greek myth I have ever seen", and it holds a very strong 94 per cent "Fresh" rating on review site Rotten Tomatoes. The audience score is even higher, proving that Elon Musk's desperate attempts to spark an anti-woke backlash were all for naught.
However, one critic arguably has the opinion that trumps all others: Emily Wilson, the academic whose recent translation of the text took the literary world by storm (and caused some controversy along the way). In an article for the upcoming issue of London Review of Books, which has been published early online, the scholar gave her take on Nolan's adaptation. Safe to say: she is not a fan.
First off, why does Emily Wilson matter? Well, not only was her translation the first to be conducted by a woman, but it was also heralded in academic circles for capturing the poem's musicality through her choice of meter, and for undoing centuries of Christianisation, misogyny and euphemism that had been projected onto translations of the text. Her version has been flying off the shelves since then, and some would argue that it's the definitive modern version of the text. Christopher Nolan himself even referenced Wilson's translation as a key inspiration for his take on the film. To put it simply, she knows what she's talking about.
In the opening paragraph of her review (titled An Uncomplicated Man—a riff on the first line of her own translation), Wilson offers some backhanded praise. She says it's "not boring", deeming it "a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display—and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth". Yikes.
Throughout her piece, the scholar notes that no adaptation should necessarily follow an original exactly (she in fact praises some that radically reinterpret The Odyssey, including Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad, Madeline Miller's Circe and other literary classics that riff off the text, including those of Euripides, John Milton and James Joyce).
She does, however, criticise the film's lack of "restraint" (the defining emotion of Odysseus' journey), the underdevelopment of the rich female characters from the poem, the inadvertently regressive tropes that Nolan's "race-neutral casting" falls into, and the ethically controversial irony of filming it all in an occupied territory (part of the movie was shot in Western Sahara, where there is an ongoing violence against the indigenous Sahrawi population. Wilson points out that using it as a beautiful backdrop for a film redeeming the hero of a territorial war seems to be a major oversight). In one particularly cutting moment, she notes that Nolan cited the first line of her translation, responding: "I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script".
The crux of her criticism, however, revolves around the characterisation of Odysseus: simply put, turning the conniving character into a "reluctant warlord" simply doesn't make sense. "We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it—a very different point," she explains.
She concludes by writing that it "lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth," that "its narrative structure is gimmicky" and the writing "abysmal". In a slight caveat, she points out that, in the grand scheme of things, a film that serves as a literary adaptation bringing people back into cinemas during the streaming era can only be a good thing.
In fairness, her criticisms align with a lot of arguments that have been made about other films in Nolan's oeuvre. The Dark Knight Rises received some criticism for "whitewashing" the Al Ghul characters, and a number of his films (namely Inception and Oppenheimer) have been accused of flat female characters in male-centric narratives, to name a few.
There's an argument to be made that few directors receive the same level of scrutiny in these areas than Nolan does. In one Reddit thread dedicated to the topic, fans of the filmmaker pointed out that other famous male directors like Spielberg suffer from some of the same issues but don't get the same backlash. On the other hand, is there a mainstream Hollywood director that receives the same level of intellectualised praise? For every person pointing out the flaws in Nolan's films, there are hundreds heralding him as the best thing since sliced bread. What feels so exciting and refreshing about Wilson's take, regardless of whether you agree with her, is to see someone so high-profile with a rock-solid criticism of a filmmaker so often immune from regular critique.
Originally published on Esquire UK
Fresh off its Milan Design Week debut, PROTOTYPE ISLAND is finally returning to ArtScience Museum this weekend after an international tour. The showcase pulls together 15 projects from the city's transdisciplinary design crowd, sorted loosely across three lanes: one on care and cultural continuity, one on the tangled relationship between digital tech and material innovation, and one on the quiet infrastructures. The focus is clear: demonstrate how design can improve the way we live beyond just looking pretty.
When: Now till 20 September 2026, from 10am to 7pm
Where: ArtScience Museum, 6 Bayfront Ave, Singapore 018974
If you're looking for an excuse to rediscover Singapore as a tourist, Light Together Bras Basah.Bugis has you covered. Singapore Night Festival and HeritageSG have turned the neighbourhood's quieter corners and grand old buildings into something out of a fever dream. Think local folklore reimagined as glowing light installations, tucked into five spots across the district: Artsplace @ Waterloo Centre, the Reflection Pool at Bras Basah MRT, Stamford Place, Stamford Walkway, and the National Museum (though that last one's only lit up through August 12). It's less an exhibition and more a scavenger hunt that rewards you with old stories from the city at each stop.
When: 1 August to 5 September 2026, from 7:30pm onwards
Where: Bras Basah.Bugis Precinct
If you’ve been toying with the idea of trying hair removal for a while now, here’s something that might finally push you over the edge. STRIP just rolled out Zero Friction Fitness, a new end-to-end service built around Advanced Fluorescence Technology. Walk through 5 interactive stations that demonstrate how everything from resistance and recovery to precision and comfort works in tandem to achieve a frictionless living.
The STRIP folks are handing out 100 free ZFF kits worth SGD200, including a free laser hair removal underarm session daily. But if you miss out on that, don’t worry, every visitor walks away with a goodie bag just for showing up.
When: 31 July to 10 August
Where: ION Orchard, B4 ION Station, 2 Orchard Turn, Singapore 238801
This weekend will hold arguably the largest pet event this city’s got. The Singapore Pet Festival will host over 800 brands crammed into 300 booths, workshops, contests, and enough fellow pet parents to make small talk with for hours. The real headliner, though, is Cesar Millan, the actual Dog Whisperer, who's doing meet-and-greets and private sharing sessions if you've ever wanted the man himself to explain why your dog won't listen to a word you say.
When: 31 July to 2 August 2026, from 10am to 8pm
Where: 10 Bayfront Avenue, Sands Expo Convention Centre, Halls A-D, Singapore 018956
Save a spot here
Bugis Street's getting a facelift, turning the shopping strip into its first permanent youth space. It acts as a hub for indie brands and up-and-coming creatives to do their thing. Think 30-plus fashion and lifestyle booths worth actually digging through, plus a DJ corner spinning tunes so browsing turns into more of a hangout. And if you're the type who lives for a good vintage find, they've brought in 15 thrift and vintage labels for the launch.
When: 25 July 2026 onwards, from 1 to 7pm
Where: Bugis Street, Level 2, 3 New Bugis St, Singapore 188867
GrillFest's back for its ninth year with forty-two grill vendors lined up along Siloso Beach. Sprawling across five zones with 18 new vendors thrown into the mix, expect absurdly large cheese sausages, grilled lobsters, smoked beef short ribs, and more. Plus, a first-ever Chef's Grill omakase-style setup for something a bit more refined. This opening weekend runs Thursday through Sunday, and if you can't make it, no stress—three more rounds are lined up through mid-August.
When: 23 July to 16 August 2026, from 4 to 10:30pm
Where: Siloso Beach, 10A Siloso Beach Walk, Singapore 099008
Gardens by the Bay is playing host to 76 years of Formula 1 history, spread across seven themed rooms that include Sebastian Vettel's championship-winning 2011 Red Bull RB7 and the 2003 BAR Honda that Jenson Button used to drive. Throw in some racing simulators and footage you won't find anywhere else, and it's a solid way to burn an afternoon whether you're a die-hard fan or just F1-curious.
When: Now till 18 October 2026, from 11am to 9pm
Where: Gardens by the Bay, 18 Marina Gardens Dr, Singapore 018953
Get your tickets here
Hear, hear, jazz lovers. The Esplanade's going all in on Jazz this July, and the best part is you barely have to spend a dime. Over 50 performances and workshops are stacked across the Concert Hall, the Recital Studio and that free Concourse stage. Expect free outdoor sets with no ticket, and no fuss. Just pull up the daily schedule, pick an evening, and wander in whenever.
When: 1 to 31 July 2026
Where: Esplanade, Theatres on the Bay, 1 Esplanade Drive, Singapore 038981
More info here
Common Man Coffee Roasters (CMCR) is back with the fourth run of Chin Swee Neighbourhood Club, spread across four weekends from 11 July to 2 August, with a weekly rotation of events. Look forward to trivia and DJ sets in Joo Chiat, a pet-friendly brunch weekend in Alexandra, a block party at the Barista Academy in Chin Swee, the works. Check out what they've got planned for this weekend here.
When: Now till 2 August
Where: Common Man Coffee Roasters, 185 Joo Chiat Rd, Singapore 427456
Save a seat here
Swing by local fashion label IN GOOD COMPANY’s first-ever standalone lifestyle spot that folds fashion, food, and community into one very good-looking space. Ground yourself with tea and wagashi at MIURA, the new concept from the Paaru crew, then poke around a curation of local and regional labels worth your attention. On the third level, there's also an attic being saved for future gatherings and creative programming, so keep your eyes peeled.
When: Tuesdays to Sundays, from 11am to 7pm
Where: 316 Joo Chiat Road, Singapore 427567
There’s a new library in town, and this one’s loaning out physical media that spins instead of flips. Swee Lee has recently launched Southeast Asia’s first vinyl lending library, allowing members to bring home up to three records at a time with no fixed loan duration. There’ll be listening stations where you can drown out the world by your lonesome, or in pairs.
Spend the day browsing their massive collection of vinyl, take pictures in photobooths, and linger over a cup of coffee from their café corner as you enjoy music the way it was intended.
When: Daily, from 10:30am to 10pm on weekends, and 12 to 9pm on weekdays
Where: Swee Lee Clarke Quay and Swee Lee The Star Vista
More information here
PREVIOUSLY
If you've ever wanted to feel like you're raiding a royal treasury, the Asian Civilisations Museum has you covered. The Louvre is bringing over a hundred pieces from its Islamic art collection to Singapore for the first time. Crosscurrents: Masterpieces of Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman Art traces the rise and fall of three empires that ran the show across West and Central Asia from the 1500s to the 1700s, through jewels, artifacts, and objects pulled straight from their royal collections.
When: From 19 Jun 2026 to 24 Jan 2027
Where: Asian Civilisations Museum, 1 Empress Pl, Singapore 179555
If you've ever wanted to know what it feels like to drop several thousand metres below the surface, Into the Ocean: Journey Beneath is your weekend sorted. Built around never-before-seen footage from OceanX, the exhibition pulls you through the ocean's shifting depths using footage captured by submersibles that go where cameras rarely follow. It's less of a museum visit, rather than a full sensory immersion, with interactive elements that tie back to actual marine conservation work.
When: 6 June to 1 November 2026
Where: ArtScience Museum, 6 Bayfront Avenue, Singapore 018974
Save a spot here
Portals is an experience that spread across 13,000 sq ft (roughly the size of 4.5 standard tennis courts). Walk through eight fully built realms drawn from sci-fi, fantasy, and gaming with proper constructed environments, not just mood boards on a wall. The real draw, though, is what's hanging inside them: original Golden Age sci-fi and fantasy book cover paintings, actual oil and acrylic canvases, not prints or reproductions, that shaped an entire generation's visual imagination.
When: Now till 2 September 2026, from 9am to 9pm
Where: Fever Exhibition Hall, 25 Scotts Road, Singapore 228220
Save a spot here
Singapore Art Museum is hosting Form is Emptiness, the first major solo show in Southeast Asia from legendary Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto. Spanning 60-plus works across five decades, the show moves through photography, sculpture, and large-scale installation, loosely framed around the Buddhist concept of the Five Elements. Think meditative seascapes, architectural interventions, and objects that somehow feel both ancient and weightless. It's a rare chance to slow down and spend time genuinely thinking about time, perception, and reality.
When: 29 May to 4 October 2026
Where: Gallery 1 & The Engine Room, Level 1, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore 089065
Save a spot here
National Gallery Singapore is turning things up with its first-ever R18 exhibition, Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art. Drawing from Liu Kang’s 1953 essay Trip to Bali, the shows treats erotic desire as a catalyst for change—one that shapes how we see, feel, and connect. Expect over 70 works spanning painting, video, print and sculpture, all circling the same pulse: the body, longing, and everything in between.
When: 24 April to 30 August 2026
Where: National Gallery Singapore, Level 4, 1 St Andrew’s Road, Singapore 178957
More information here
If you’re feeling stressed, you may want to consider loosening up and going crazy behind the wheel—responsibly. On the sixth level of Novena Square’s carpark, you’ll be able to drift go-karts inspired by Initial D on a track which takes its cues from the legendary touge mountain roads of Japan. The cars are tuned to be forgiving, meaning you don't need a decade of track time to get drifting down.
When: Daily, from 10am to 9:30pm
Where: Velocity @ Novena Square, Level 6A (carpark, lift only), 238 Thomson Rd, Singapore 307683
He Xiangning was not only a pioneer in modern Chinese ink art but also a prominent figure in feminism and a chairwoman of various political parties. He Xiangning: Ink and Intent marks the largest travelling exhibition of her work, tracing over 7 decades of her artistic journey, told across 50 artworks. Expect to unearth time capsules of strong commentary on political and societal transformations of the time, and perhaps, even draw parallels to the current political climate of the world.
When: 1 April to 23 August 2026
Where: Wu Guanzhong Gallery, Level 4, City Hall Wing, National Gallery Singapore, 178957
Perhaps it’s time to pick up a new hobby that distracts you from the incessant humming of productivity. This beginner-friendly crochet session at KADA is low-stakes, softly paced, and designed for absolute first-timers. Guided by a coach with an interior design background, the session will feel less like a class and more like a laid-back session with patient guidance and a small handmade piece to take home. There’s even a complimentary drink to ease you in.
When: Various dates
Where: The Possible Space, 5 Kadayanallur St, #01-01, Singapore 069183
Save a spot here
After years of living in the digital space, Avant is finally settling down in a brick-and-mortar. Across periodical phases, the space will grow to house over 1000 curated mix of records, compact discs and rarities. But it’s not all just vinyl—there’ll be vintage print items, objects, and books centred around pop culture. The space is designed to feel lived in and curated, making it an ideal spot to listen, vibe, and linger a little longer than you probably should.
When: See @avantcultureclub for opening hours
Where: 195 Pearl's Hill Terrace, #01-60, Singapore 168976
If you’re feeling adventurous, head down to Dopamine Land for a quick hit of multisensory euphoria. Having toured cities from London to Madrid, the Singapore edition will feature nine interactive spaces. You can wage pillow fights at The Cushion Clash or get jiggy with it on the Chromadance floor. But there are also more calming spaces in case things get too overstimulating. Euphoria Grove puts you in a bean-bag filled sanctuary with lighting that changes according to the four seasons, while the Cave of Tactility cocoons you in a room with soft, colourful textural walls.
When: Daily (except Thursdays), from 11am to 9pm
Where: Dopamine Land Singapore, #02-204/205, Weave, Resorts World Sentosa, 26 Sentosa Gateway, Singapore 098269
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Having a guitar is like having a key to the world.” This is what Glen Hansard told me, sitting on the beach in Santa Monica many, many years ago. It was only one part of a bigger philosophy that guided who he was, and who he became. At the end of this tribute, you’ll see where he puts a fine point on the lesson, but before that I want to tell the full story of how he learned it.
As a journalist, I followed the John Carney-directed movie Once all the way from its Sundance roots to its indie blockbuster rollout, and onward to the Oscars, where it won the best song award for “Falling Slowly.” We had many interviews over that time, and when I learned today that Hansard had died at the age of 56 in a motorcycle crash, I felt my heart break. I went back to look at our talk on the beach from long ago, which broke it all over again.
This particular conversation happened in the summer of 2007, when Once was just beginning to catch on as a sleeper hit. The world needs more love stories, then and now, and Once is among the greatest ever made. It also helped turn Hansard into a kind of patron saint for buskers.
“It’s an amazing way to get to know a town,” Hansard went on. “You take out a guitar on any street in any city in the world and start playing, you’re going to end up at some party, you’re going to end up in someone’s apartment, you’re going to end up in some bar.” Through Once, his guitar really was about to open up the world in a more profound way than he could have imagined.
“Being out on the street, everyone is equal,” Hansard said. “You’re at the bottom rung, but one step above begging. You’ve completely humbled yourself because you’re not in any way a rock star. Your currency is at zero. But also your debt is at zero. So nobody can either judge you or slag you. It’s a great honour being a street musician.”
In Once, Hansard starred as one such Dublin street performer who develops a halting, gentle romance with a Czech pianist, played by Markéta Irglová. In real life, they performed together as the folk-rock duo the Swell Season, and working so intimately over time led to an actual romance. Hansard had been a working musician for years, having played with Carney in their band the Frames, but in his younger years he had also been a busker, playing his heart out on street corners as he made his way here and there.
It helped Once to have two true romantics as the leads, and Hansard was undeniably that. He poured his heart out in every song, no matter how many times he had played it. He felt things deeply, and he made everyone who heard him feel the same. Irglová was no less of a powerhouse performer than he was, but she acknowledged being more introverted. (In our interview, she seldom spoke up.) Hansard, who had a carnival barker’s enthusiasm, helped to draw her out.
Their personal romance did not last, but their musical partnership did. Irglová went on to marry Icelandic music producer Sturla Míó Þórisson, with whom she has three children and found success as a solo performer. But in 2022, she and Hansard reunited for a series of performances as the Swell Season. She said it was like no time had passed.
“One thing that did change, [was] when we’re on a stage together now, for the first time I perceived us as equals,” she told The Irish Times. “Glen had always treated me as an equal on stage. He always trusted me a lot and gave me a lot of credit for our collaboration, and he always spoke about me in a way that I didn’t see myself.”
The characters in Once didn’t end up together forever either, but the power of that movie is that they both came away from their connection inexorably stronger. That echoed in real life. “Throughout the years, when I had to become a little bit more independent musically, I did grow an inner strength and trust in myself,” Irglová told the newspaper. “So now, when we join each other on stage, I feel like that, too: ‘Okay, now we’re equals and we’re both bringing something to the table which makes this more than each of us are on our own.’”
Years before, when he, Irglová, and Carney sat with me on that California beach—a whole world away from both Ireland and the Czech Republic—it was natural that our conversation turned to how far music can take you. That’s when Hansard made the remark about what a guitar can unlock in a foreign land. But it also opened up even more distant memories.
Hansard had been to this sunny California beach when he was in his early twenties. “I busked here in ’94 and ’93. I stayed in Santa Monica for about two months and I played in some café. I can’t remember the name of it. They were really kind. They gave me a spot. I came over here, just hanging out with a friend of mine who’s a DJ. I came busking every day here.”
The street performers were out in full force again on the day we visited. Various guitarists up and down the promenade strummed and sang soulfully, rappers amped up the crowd with hip-hop numbers, a preacher waved his Bible as he barked at passersby, and there was even someone offering mystical guidance from two “Psychic Cats” dressed in miniature fortune-teller costumes. Even they could not have predicted what was about to happen for the Once performers.
The street musician who actually caught their attention that day was a man in a grey fedora, singing at the top of his lungs into a portable mic as a boombox played the Frank Sinatra hit “That’s Life.” It wasn’t necessarily their style of music, but Hansard, Irglová, and Carney recognised the passion in the streetside crooner. “He really thinks he’s in the Sands Hotel in 1965,” Carney said. He began to sing along.
About eight months after that day on the sandy sidewalks of Santa Monica, Hansard and Irglová were back in LA, this time at the Academy Awards, where “Falling Slowly,” their most hauntingly beautiful song from Once, was up for best original song. During awards season, I saw them at a Fox Searchlight awards-season bash, where they stood on a tabletop and sang live for the crowd.
At the Academy Award rehearsals for their telecast performance, I was reunited with the duo again. Over the months, Once had helped them amass stories of meeting some of their musical heroes, and Hansard told me the pinnacle was getting to talk to Bob Dylan, although he struggled with what he should say to the legend. While shaking Dylan’s hand, Hansard said he told him, “This feels to me the way you must have felt meeting Woody Guthrie.” You can imagine that struck a chord with Dylan.
On the night of the Hollywood ceremony, Hansard and Irglová walked the red carpet together. He carried his battered six-string in a green guitar case marked with stickers from their travels. That guitar really had been a key to the world, and now it was leading them to the Oscar stage.
After John Travolta presented the pair with the award, Hansard told the audience: “We never thought we’d come into a room like this and be in front of you people.” His face red with excitement, he begged people at home: “Make art... make art.” After he stepped from the mic, Irglová walked up and said only a brief thank-you before turning away. But the room didn’t hear even that. The mic had been cut, and the orchestra drowned out her words.
As the pair walked behind the curtain with their trophies, Irglová was nonetheless all smiles. Hansard, however, was hopping with excitement. I was covering the ceremony from the wings of the stage, and Hansard slung an arm around my shoulder, clutching the Oscar just inches from my face as his phone agitated in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out and showed me the message: “A congrats message from Bono!” he said.
That’s when Jon Stewart stopped them on their way to the press room. He was apologetic. “They were going to let you say something,” Stewart told Irglová. “But they cut you off by mistake.” To make it right, the producers were going to do something unprecedented in Oscar history. When the show returned from its commercial break, they would send her back onstage to finish her remarks.
Irglová played along, but was taken aback. She had only ever intended to say a quick “thank you.” Now she had to figure out something more to say. Stewart guided them (with me in tow) to a small holding area at stage left, where he waited with them while the commercials finished airing. Hansard lightened Irglová’s nerves by making his Oscar kiss hers.
When the music rose and Stewart beckoned her onstage, Irglová’s improvised speech turned out to be even more eloquent and moving than even she expected. She spoke from the heart about every other artist like them who struggles to be heard or seen. Her message was simple: Don’t give up. “No matter how far out your dreams are, it’s possible,” she said. “Fair play to those who dare to dream.”
What was striking about Irglová and Hansard is that they could perform powerfully in the world’s biggest spotlight, but they also found the joy in standing on a tabletop to sing, and they never forgot what it was like to play for only one person, or maybe nobody at all, while standing on a sidewalk. That was the idea that guided who he was.
“It’s an amazing life being a street musician,” Hansard told me that day in Santa Monica. “It’s not just about making money and surviving. Not at all—it’s the opposite. It’s a complete wonderland, depending on your intentions. If you intend to make money, generally you won’t make much money and won’t meet anyone. But if your intention is to go out and sing a few songs and enjoy yourself, the world opens up. Which is a lesson for life.”
This was something included in the original draft but cut from my old story. I thought it was worth remembering him with it now.
Originally published on Esquire US
Singapore has built a reputation for having one of the most vibrant food scenes not just in Asia, but in the world. In fact, the fine-dining scene here is one of the strongest in the world. By the numbers, Singapore boasts one of the highest concentrations of Michelin-starred restaurants per capita—roughly one for every 114,000 people, placing it seventh in the world.
In an environment so saturated with competition, it takes a certain calibre and standard to stand out. To own a restaurant and earn a Michelin star is to swim against the tide. To earn two Michelin stars is to swim against the unforgiving currents of the ocean. To own two restaurants, each having earned two Michelin stars, is to swim against a tsunami. Chef Emmanuel Stroobant is swimming against a tsunami.
Since 2000, he has been the chef-owner of Saint Pierre, a French fine-dining restaurant serving modern French cuisine with Asian influences. Nearly three decades on, the restaurant finds itself holding two Michelin stars, an honour it has maintained since 2019. It’s tucked away on the upper level of One Fullerton, sitting right on the edge of Marina Bay and offering an unobstructed view of the waterfront.
Just 10 steps from Saint Pierre's entrance, tucked even deeper into One Fullerton, lies the entrance to Stroobant's second establishment: Shoukouwa. Opened in 2016, the Japanese sushiya earned two Michelin stars just a few months after launch, cementing its place as one of the earliest success stories in Singapore's fine-dining scene.
To put things into perspective, only seven restaurants in Singapore hold two Michelin stars. Chef Stroobant owns two of those seven, making him the only active chef-owner in Singapore to have achieved this feat. Now that we have a clearer sense of the culinary maestro we’re dealing with, it’s about time we dived into the interview. We sat with the Belgian-born chef at his beloved brainchild, Saint Pierre, right after lunch service.
ESQUIRE SINGAPORE: Your cooking is rooted in classical French training—what made you want to open Shoukouwa?
EMMANUEL STROOBANT: I can't take the credit for Shoukouwa, it’s Edina's [my wife]. The story is we used to be at Sentosa, looking at coming back into the city because Michelin was coming here, and we had this location [One Fullerton]—it used to be a big disco, actually. We had the whole floor, but it was too big. So that's how we decided to look at a second concept within the same space. We didn't want just two-in-one; we needed to separate them completely. She wanted to do a Japanese restaurant, and we'd been talking about it for a while.
Back in 2016 when we opened, sushi was quite trending, there were only a few players, but there was nothing really established in a classical way. I couldn't find a similar experience in Singapore; they were making it a little more localised. We wanted to create a real, classic Tokyo-style experience.
The idea of doing such a concept was a challenge for me specifically, because I'm not Japanese and I'd never done something like this. That's why I have to give credit to Edina—it was really her baby, she carried it. My involvement today is supporting from a technological point of view—air con, gas, a leak here and there—and procurement, sourcing the ingredients in Japan.
ESQ: How culturally shocking was it opening Shoukouwa?
ES: When we first opened, I thought I knew something about Japanese food because I'm a chef and I'd been playing with rice and vinegars for a while. When we started working with the Japanese chefs, I realised I knew nothing whatsoever. I never thought about different provenance or the mixing of older, starchier rice with new, crunchier rice. I had to re-look at everything like an apprentice from day one.
We have a supplier there, for instance, who picks the fish for us. It's a small restaurant, so sometimes they don't need a whole fish, just half. Our guy will pick the side that hasn't been in contact with the ice—because the fillet pressing against the ice essentially gets squeezed and semi-frozen. He makes sure we never get that part.
The chefs made us change the water piping, for instance—it's 32 degrees outside, so when you open the tap, the water running is 30 degrees. They said, "It's cooking the fish." We had to change the piping.
ESQ: Have you picked up anything from the chefs at Shoukouwa and applied it at Saint Pierre?
ES: You're asking an interesting question. The very first time I collaborated with a real three-Michelin-star Japanese chef, he came into my kitchen with a big bag, and I thought it would be all his equipment and ingredients. He opened the bag: white cotton cloths. Every time he picked something up in the kitchen, a pot, anything, he would take a white cotton cloth and wipe it nicely. It was ceremonial. It was beautiful to watch.
Back around 2013–2014, the kitchen at Saint Pierre had music playing quite loudly. Very high energy. So to have somebody come in with this smooth, almost Zen temple attitude—that really changed the way I looked at things. To do things a bit more focused, a bit slower sometimes. Rushing doesn't always give you the results you want. That's something I really take from them.
ESQ: My perception of Michelin-starred kitchens is that they're run almost like the military—very orderly, very intense.
ES: But discipline, respect, and hierarchy don't mean you have to scream at everybody. There's no need for names and going crazy. On top of that, especially in Japan, losing your temper is a sign of weakness—it shows you cannot control your own emotions. That's how they look at it.
It's like driving a car. If the driver loses it, the car goes everywhere. We drive a team—we need to keep a clear mind to be able to lead these guys. I do believe in that.
ESQ: Oh, have you seen The Bear?
ES: I’ve seen some of it.
ESQ: Is it accurate at all?
ES: To a certain extent, it is. But it’s a little passé—it’s something which, during my apprentice days, was correct. I haven’t seen a lot, to be frank, but I remember glimpses of it, and it reminded me of Bernard Loiseau, who always said, "I want my three stars, I have my three stars." He had a personal desire to achieve, and he led his team to achieve with him.
In my case, it's not "I want this"—it's more, "This needs to be done, and here's how we're going to do it together." It's a very different approach.
ESQ: You planned to study law and originally took a kitchen job just to fund university. What was the moment you decided this was your life instead?
ES: I come from a very humble background—very humble. During secondary school, I was really interested in criminology, and to do criminology, you need law first. To afford university, it wasn't so much the tuition—it was the lifestyle. The apartment, the living expenses. I didn't have money, so I decided to work during the summer and put money aside.
I ended up at uni, but I could feel it wasn't for me. I used to ride my bike in a T-shirt, jeans, tattoos. The other students were dropped off by mum and dad in Mercedes with little ties. I couldn't connect. I never even finished a term.
Meanwhile, I'd been working as a dishwasher, washing pots in the kitchen. The atmosphere, the respect, the teamwork, the brotherhood were fascinating. One day, my chef said, "If you want to try, we're always shorthanded. Do a bit of salad, help us here and there."
It went from small salads to a bit of sauce to starters. Then he said, "Why don't you join us full-time? This is an apprenticeship." And that's how I ended up in the kitchen.
ESQ: You're a Singaporean citizen now. At what point did Singapore start feeling like home?
ES: Fairly early, actually. We moved here in '99. Singapore was different because it was organised, and everything functioned. There was also something about Singapore that reminded me of home. In Belgium, we have French, Dutch, and German cultures—three completely different backgrounds living together.
I enjoyed that same sense of community here, so much to learn from one another. Everything worked smoothly, we started a business, we had kids—and that's when I said, "Okay, this is home."
I took citizenship in 2014, so it's been 12 years now, and I've never looked back. When I look at the way the world goes, I'm actually quite proud to be Singaporean.
ESQ: Is there a dish that best represents who you are as a chef?
ES: We used to have this dish on the menu—I've taken it off now because the season ended—called the Amela Tomato. I joke about it because I call it a signature dish that's never actually been listed on the menu. We served it between starters and main course: a very simple tomato, one of the best I've ever tried, where we burn the skin. Normally you'd boil tomatoes to peel them, but you lose all the flavour in the water. By burning the skin, you add another layer of flavour. We served it with a galangal consommé and a white miso dressing. Extremely simple—really nothing to it.
That dish represents the restaurant because we've always been ingredient-focused. It's never about hiding the product; it's about taking something of quality and just letting it be what it is.
Earlier in my career, I used to do a lot of combinations—marinating meat, layering second and third ingredients, adding and adding, thinking complexity worked that way. But over the last ten-plus years, I realised that stripping everything away is actually much harder. You need a product and a technique that are perfect, with nothing to hide behind.
ESQ: Where do you draw inspiration when you feel creatively stuck?
ES: Edina. She's my muse. We spend a lot of time together on holiday, evenings, weekends—it's very important to be able to exchange. She's not a chef, so she thinks about food without the blinkers we develop as chefs.
The second thing—and I smile when I say this—is meditation. It's a real big part of my life, that's how I keep the balance. I do an hour a day, no matter what. Even if I come home at 2 a.m., I still do it.
There are times when you're in that space, people call it the zone, where you're completely free of thinking, and things just come together. Like in Ratatouille, where he [Remy] explains the cheese and the grapes. I might be working on a squid and caviar dish, and during meditation, ideas just surface. I keep a piece of paper next to me and write it all down the moment it comes out.
ESQ: You have two Michelin stars—one for Saint Pierre, one for Shoukouwa. How taxing is that on you?
ES: It's a matter of perspective. I don't think it's taxing—it's more pushing. Every single plate pushes us to our limit.
Michelin gives you the opportunity to have that discipline because you're always conscious of maintaining the standard. It's like training for a competition: you train, train, train to show the very best of yourself every time.
On top of that, in my case, I suffer from ADHD quite badly (laughing). That push actually helps me enormously—in terms of leading the team, planning, staying focused.
ESQ: Marco Pierre White famously returned his Michelin stars because he disliked being judged by people he felt knew less than him. What are your thoughts on that?
ES: It's his choice, and while I respect everybody's choices—let me share my personal take. If I finish a dish in the kitchen, I don't think I should be the sole judge of it. Of course, I won't present something I'm not proud of—that's a given. But I want somebody else to tell me: yes or no.
Marco's argument is that the inspectors aren't as good as him, don't know as much as [he does]. Yes, but they're still your clients. They're still the people who need to eat the food. Criticism, in many ways, acts like a mirror—you may not always agree with it, but it reflects how others experience your work. Ignoring it completely risks the chance of stagnation.
Michel Bras and his son Sébastien, around 2018, also asked to be removed from the guide. His approach was different: he wanted a simple family life and didn't want the pressure of possibly losing a star. He decided he'd rather be with his family and cook what he felt like. That's a respectable personal decision.
But here's the thing—Michelin is a guide. You cannot choose to be in or out. It's like a TV programme. If The Bear is playing at 8 p.m. on Channel 5, it's in the guide. You can't say, "I don't want to be listed." You're playing, you're on the guide. That's really the point.
ESQ: You've had some health scares that led you to become a vegetarian. Has that hindered your ability to run the kitchen?
ES: No, I still taste everything. I was a professional chef before I was a vegetarian, and tasting is part of the job. At home, I'll always avoid meat, fish, and eggs when I have the choice, but I'm not super strict.
I've made the switch from quantity to quality. I used to drink a lot—vodka was my choice because it tastes like nothing (laughing). Now I don't drink, but if I did, I'd pick one great bottle of wine and have a glass or two. Same with food: if I sit down for a tasting, I make sure what I'm tasting is the very best I can get my hands on, and I take one considered bite.
ESQ: What are your top three favourite vegetables?
ES: Tomato. It's a vegetable by botanical definition, and it's very personal to me. There are about 10,000 different varieties in the world—it has such an interesting history, how it was picked up, how it travelled to Europe, how it was finally accepted. Tomato gives you a lot of variation in terms of flavour profile—acidic, umami, sweetness—and when it's well balanced, you've got all of those things happening at once.
Mushrooms would be my second pick, because of the versatility. There are so many different mushrooms all over the world. The only sad part is that they're seasonal, so you don't have them all year round. There's so much interesting depth. From a vegetarian perspective, mushrooms give me the flavour profiles I'd otherwise associate with meat.
And then potato (laughing). I'm originally from Belgium, so—French fries, even if they call them that, are from Belgium. I love potatoes. I'll have a masala potato for an Indian breakfast. It's so versatile, it's foundational.
ESQ: Outside of your own restaurants, where have you had your best bite in Singapore?
ES: Home. We're not a big family, but there are eight of us in the house, and I cook quite often—I enjoy it, I like entertaining at home. We're also very fortunate to have two helpers, and one of them is an amazing cook. She loves cooking and can do anything from fried kway teow to laksa.
Otherwise, Samy's would be my favourite. Samy's Curry. The very first time I came to Singapore—it was '97, a rainy Sunday, I had a meeting in Dempsey. I didn't know the area, so we sat down on the terrace. First time in my life I'd seen a banana leaf. I felt like I was in another world. The food is so simple, so tasty. Now we go at least twice a month.
I also like Summer Pavilion. If I had to go Chinese, it’s where I would go.
ESQ: Rank the following: texture, taste, and presentation.
ES: Taste first, no question. At the end of the day, texture lifts and helps taste, but taste is the most important. Presentation is very personal.
The tongue gives you more about texture: hot, cold, crunchy, soft, and yes, the basic tastes. But flavour—true flavour—we perceive through the brain, via the retronasal area, from the back of the nose. That's why when you're sick, you can't taste anything. That's why, as a kid, if you didn't want to taste something, you plugged your nose.
Once you understand how flavour actually works, our job as chefs becomes so much more interesting. There are at least four hundred nerves involved in that process. The perception of flavour is essentially limitless.
And then you add the emotional layer—the personal history. We all have emotional backgrounds attached to certain flavours. I go back to…Ratatouille! (laughing) If you can touch someone with a dish and bring them back to a memory, that's magic. The smell goes straight to the brain with no filter, while taste travels through different filters before it gets there. That's physiologically correct, and it's fascinating.
ESQ: Michelin stars are the goal inside the kitchen—what are you chasing outside of it?
ES: Peace. I've come to a point in my life where I love what I do, I really enjoy it. But when the weekend comes, I want to spend time with the children. I'm a chef, but I'm also a husband and a father. Yoga is one of the ways I balance that.
You need a gate between your work and your private life. In my case it's trickier because food is my life, so I can cook great food at home, but I don't need to bring the drama with it. They don't need that stress. So yes, peace.
ESQ: What would you want your final meal to be?
ES: Spaghetti Bolognese. Funny answer for a vegetarian, but if it's the final one, I may as well enjoy it. It's a family thing—my dad used to make it when I was a kid, the simplest pasta, and I've never been able to taste a better recipe than his. He taught me, I learned it, and I still cook it at home quite often.
But honestly, the last meal is not so much about what it would be—it's about who it would be with and how it would feel. I'd rather have a nice meal with my family and the people I love than be in a fancy restaurant with someone I don't enjoy. You could have an amazing McDonald's meal with your best friend, laughing and having a great time, or you could have a beautiful fine dining experience with someone delivering terrible news.
What I'm trying to say is—there is another dimension to food beyond just what's on the plate.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
When it comes to Bram Stoker’s enduring influence in media, the mind naturally drifts to direct descendants of the blood-sucking archetype. Think cinematic landmarks like Nosferatu, to the cultural phenomenon of Twilight. Even the kids aren’t spared, with parodies like Hotel Transylvania serving as opiates for the youth.
But in truth, the Irish writer’s grasp on the cultural landscape of today extends far beyond fangs and capes. From plotlines like the shared consciousness between humans and supernatural entities (think Will and Vecna from Stranger Things), to the popularisation of goth subculture in fashion and music, and even technical storytelling methods that would later evolve into the “found footage” genre in modern media (i.e. The Blair Witch Project)—through his works, Stoker’s imagination continues to shape the world in surprising ways.
To honour the legendary writer, Montblanc has dedicated the latest chapter of its Writers Edition to him. The tribute takes the form of four writing instruments, each interpreting a different facet of Dracula, its characters, and Stoker himself.
The Writers Edition Homage to Bram Stoker Limited Edition colours the harrowing moment after a vampire’s bite. Red and black are crafted from resin that’s swirled together in a divide, representing the spreading of poison from a vampire’s bite into the bloodstream. The instrument is enhanced with ruthenium-coated fittings, a solid Au 750 gold nib, and a vampiric bite mark just above the clip for greater theatrical effect.
The Limited Edition 1897—referencing the year of Dracula’s publication—embodies the Count’s ability to transform into a bat. Crafted from Ag 925 sterling silver with a special oxidised finish, the instrument features structural ridges wrapped around the cap and barrel, resembling the folded wings of a resting bat. Additional finishes such as the ruthenium-coated fittings, a mother-of-pearl cap top set with red garnets, and even the design of the cone take cues from the columns outside the Lyceum Theatre in London, where Stoker once worked, subtly reinforcing the writing instrument’s gothic sensibility.
Fittingly limited to just 93 pieces to commemorate the year 1893 when Stoker began penning his magnum opus, the Limited Edition 93 is a materialisation of his fascination with science, medicine and technological progress. Its industrial aesthetic also evokes Professor Abraham Van Helsing, the novel's resilient vampire hunter. Crafted from solid Au 750 white gold with blackened finishings and engravings, the barrel features a wide window into its body, reminiscent of the Pravaz syringe. Celtic knot motifs, originally drawn by Stoker's sister Matilda, adorn the writing instrument, while his family crest is engraved proudly alongside sprawling botanical patterns on the cap, extending the tribute to the Stoker family.
Finally, the Limited Edition 8 is perhaps the collection’s most sophisticated creation. It borrows its logic from old superstitions used to ward off vampires in Dracula. Garlic blossoms and wild roses, worked in enamel by hand, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and intricately engraved on solid Au 750 gold. For even greater decadence, brilliant-cut diamonds are set into the fittings and accented with red garnets. Even the instrument's cone is made from solid gold and laser-engraved with matching floral motifs. On the cap, the Montblanc star is paved in diamonds and ringed with red jasper, while the handcrafted nib receives an extraordinary three-dimensional engraving complete with a single diamond.
Completing the experience are exclusive accessories, including purple ink, a black velvet notebook embossed with the same flowers, and a pair of round steel cufflinks to boot. So much craft goes into it: the stone setting, engraving, enamel work, the works. It’s the full breadth of what the workshops call métiers d'art, resulting in what can wholly be addressed as a collector’s piece.
