A Cantonese Chef Will Run Every Table at The Hari Singapore

Guests at The Hari Singapore, which opens in early 2027, will find one hand behind every menu. Aaron Tan has taken the post of Director of Culinary, with charge of four restaurants and bars, the banquet kitchen and room service. The appointment was announced on 20 October 2026.

The brief

Taste leads and looks follow, the hotel says, with a kitchen team intended to develop under him. General Manager Andreas Kraemer called Tan a chef who honours tradition while bringing in fresh ideas, and one who wants to build up the cooks around him.

Tan pitched the task at the city itself. "Singapore diners know good food," he said, adding that trust would be earned visit by visit, not with a single dish.

The cook

Tan specialises in Cantonese cuisine and has worked for more than 25 years in hotels, fine-dining rooms and events abroad, according to the hotel. His career began in Singapore, where Hong Kong master chefs taught him the fundamentals. Western, Asian and fusion cooking came later.

Until now he has cooked at Frasers House, the hotel that traded as InterContinental Singapore until its 2026 rebrand. He has worked there since 2019 as its executive sous chef and head of its Chinese kitchen. The restaurant most closely tied to his name is Man Fu Yuan. Over two days in November 2025 it served the Manchu-Han Imperial Feast with Qi Jinzhu, whom the hotel's own event page names as Tan's mentor, marking the feast's Singapore debut. The hotel puts the preparation at 14 months. Tan's 2026 work includes a joint four-hands menu with Lily's at The Ritz-Carlton, Bangkok.

In 2016 he won the Supreme Gold Award at the International Young Chef Chinese Culinary Challenge in Hong Kong with a beef tenderloin dish, in a field of 43 entrants representing 13 countries and regions, according to the organiser, Lee Kum Kee. At the World Cantonese Chef King competition in Hong Kong in September 2017, he and a teammate won silver for a hot dish and gold for dim sum. Away from the kitchen, he serves the Society of Chinese Cuisine Chefs (Singapore) as a vice president and mentors younger chefs, the hotel says.

The setting

IHG's announcement describes the project as the conversion of the Holiday Inn at Orchard City Centre, and as the Singapore debut of its Vignette Collection brand. The Hari calls it a design-led lifestyle hotel and says it will have 326 rooms once renovation is complete, along with a rooftop pool and an art collection that keeps changing. Tara Bernerd & Partners designed the interiors, drawing on Singapore's culture and tropical climate. The address is Cavenagh Road, close to Emerald Hill and Orchard Road. Two earlier Hari hotels, in London and Hong Kong, arrived in 2016 and 2020.

Names and cuisines for the four restaurants and bars have not been released, so how much of the dining draws on Tan's Cantonese background should become clearer closer to opening.