Yellow Pot: The Restaurant with Too Many Yellow Pots: Or, how a row of yellow pots lured me in.

It all started when I spotted this restaurant, Yellow Pot, on Google Maps. It was literally just an intriguing photo of a shelf full of quirky yellow pots against a black background that caught my curious eye. How cute, I thought. Definitely worthy of a click.

Yellow Pot Restaurant. Photo courtesy of The Garcha Group

That click brought me to the entrance of a modern-Chinese restaurant nestled within the Duxton Reserve Singapore, Autograph Collection: an award-winning luxury boutique hotel along Duxton Road, itself part of the heritage conservation area.

Exterior of the Duxton Reserve Singapore, Autograph Collection

Greeted by a huge yellow pot at the entrance!

What I hadn't anticipated, though, was how long the restaurant was going to be. Upon entering, we trailed down what felt like an endless left corridor: a spatial surprise in itself.

Along the way, we passed Anouska's Bar, several private dining rooms, and a dozen or so plush sofa seats, all beautifully showing off that signature yellow-and-black motif.

Anouska's Bar, Photo courtesy of The Garcha Group

Yellow Pot isn’t some cavernous, intimidating space. It’s an intimate 50-seater: compact, well-composed, and carved out with black lacquered screens and clever pockets of semi-privacy.

Why pots? Why yellow? Why so many?

Before we dive into the food, let's put the mystery of the Yellow Pot to rest.

This modern-Chinese restaurant was designed by Anouska Hempel, a New Zealand-born actress turned designer, global tastemaker, and yes, once a Bond girl (long before she became known for her signature interiors). She described the design process of Yellow Pot as “great fun,” layering Asian artefacts with pops of imperial yellow and touches of 18th-century English wallpaper from her private collection.

That’s right. A Chinese restaurant in a row of conserved shophouses once home to Chinese and Malay communities, now reimagined through a distinctly Western lens. It is a Western lens on a Chinese concept, and yes, that carries its own tensions.

But that tension is part of what makes the space so visually compelling. I may feel conflicted, but one thing’s for sure: the woman knows how to dress a room *.*

It’s beautiful. It’s bold. I came in half-expecting tales of tradition: ancestral recipes, a childhood dream, maybe even a touching origin story involving an actual yellow pot and someone’s life forever changed. But alas! Just wild imaginings on my part.

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Now, onto the food: which, interestingly, leans in the opposite direction from the opulent-yet-restrained design. It’s clean, clear, and quietly confident. True to The Garcha Group’s “no MSG, no additives” philosophy, the dishes are refreshingly restraint-forward. No numbing saltiness.

And no, the food wasn’t served in yellow pots (much to my chagrin, hehe). Instead, each course arrived deconstructed and elegantly plated, with sleek black utensils to match.

But enough preamble. Here’s what we sampled from the dinner set menu that evening:

Set Dinner Menu

Seaweed Lion Mane

Crunchy (as far as mushrooms go), chewy, and layered with umami from the seaweed seasoning. An intriguing opening into the dinner.

Truffle Sour Spicy Mayonnaise Prawn

The prawn was fresh and firm, enveloped in a punchy mayo that was tangy and spicy.

Double-boiled soup, Ten Head Abalone, Wild Mushroom

The double-boiled chicken broth was clear, comforting, and subtly rich... no MSG needed. The chicken was tender (not the usual overcooked casualty of long-simmered soups), accompanied by yellow morel and wild mushrooms.

Lamb Shank Plum Sauce (left), Miso Pepper Pork Ribs (right)

Our favourite for the night: Miso Pepper Pork Ribs. Fall-off-the-bone tender, glazed in a miso sauce that was umami without being heavy. Rich, savoury, with just the right hint of decadence. The lamb shank was generous and well-cooked too, though the plum sauce veered a little too sweet after a few bites.

Crab Meat Egg Fried Rice, Crispy Scallop

A classic wok hey dish, with crab meat and egg, topped with crispy scallop. Said scallop was very crispy... almost jarringly so! But an interesting contrast nonetheless.

Mango Pudding

A familiar ending! The mango pudding with pomelo is a staple at many Chinese restaurants.

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At this point, a hotel guest wandered in, asking for a bowl of hearty, comforting chicken soup... the way someone might ask their grandmother for her homemade soup stock. There was something strangely affectionate about it.

Honey, the on-ground manager who hosted us, treated him like he’d been coming there for years. He was feeling under the weather, and a bowl of their no-MSG double-boiled chicken soup was just the thing to lift his spirits.

Watching him, I quietly thought to myself, "Maybe Honey was right after all. The soup really is a favourite, with guests and regulars alike."

Special thanks to Honey, the on-ground manager at Duxton Reserve Singapore, for the warm hospitality and thoughtful hosting throughout our dinner set experience.

And with that, our tasting came to a close. Bellies satisfied, curiosity fed, and hotel knowledge casually expanded. We wandered around the property a little more, still caught up in the interior curiosities.

What Yellow Pot offers is well-executed food, attentive service, and a thoughtfully designed space. It suits both hotel guests and locals looking for a quieter dining experience, peppered with a bit of visual wonder.

Would I return? Probably. Especially for that double-boiled soup and the miso pepper pork ribs!

Location:

Yellow Pot, Duxton Reserve Singapore, Autograph Collection

83 Duxton Road, Singapore 089540