Nicolas Le Restaurant Reopens And Swaps Its Wine List For Open Shelves

With its reopening at Teck Lim Road, an address it has held since 2007, Nicolas Le Restaurant has quietly abolished one of hospitality’s oldest instruments.

There is no printed wine list or no leather-bound inventory anymore. Instead, guests wander the shelves themselves, ask questions, and choose their wines in an all-new immersive experience.

Nicolas Le Restaurant has reopened under new leadership: General Manager Guillaume Martin, Chef Alynna Tan, and Sommelier Brosnan Ong. The idea, says Martin, has not changed since Nicolas first opened. The experience should be about discovery, revisited favourites, and a lack of pretence.

At launch, the cellar runs to 900 references and 2,800 bottles, drawn from producers well-known and obscure. A rotating “selection of the month” introduces two wines each of Champagne, white, and red by the glass, alongside winemaker dinners built on relationships the team has kept over years.

Tan has rebuilt the food menu around French technique by way of Japanese precision. Her stints at Odette, Esora, Humpback, and Maaemo in Oslo show in a Chilean seabass with charred scallions and verjus beurre blanc ($45) and a lamb rack paired with wasabi chimichurri and pomme purée ($48)—French compositions handled with a measured heat rather than fused into something else. A mussel toast, warmed with nduja ($19 for three), does something similar in miniature.

Ong, who arrives from three-Michelin-starred Les Amis, already knew many of the restaurant’s regulars, and will be in good stead to guides guests through the new format.

The room itself has shrunk to 35 seats and softened in the process. This means fewer set menus, more shareable plates, a schedule running from afternoon browsing at 4pm through dinner and into a late wine bar by midnight, Tuesday to Saturday.