Tastemakers: From mezza to mozza, Artichoke restaurant flips the script

Straits Times

5 days ago

SINGAPORE – In Singapore's brutal food scene, where restaurants go belly up in the blink of an eye, staying open for 15 years is a feat.
Chefs and owners who get to that milestone should bask in the glow of achievement, of having had the wits to keep all those balls in the air for so many years.
Artichoke's Bjorn Shen is not basking.
He is converting his New School Middle Eastern restaurant, which turns 15 on Aug 10, into a pizza parlour. The 90-seat restaurant at New Bahru will serve its last Middle Eastern meal on Aug 10 and, on Aug 15, Artichoke becomes a New School Pizza Parlor.
Why? 'I've been playing the same video game for 15 years, using the same character and the same weapon. And, like, been slaying all the bosses,' he says.
'After 15 years of playing the same game, I'm getting bored. Can I change the character? Can I change the weapon?
'We're still playing the same Singapore F&B game. But we're changing the weapon now.'
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Middle of the barrel
He got into Middle Eastern food while working part time at a Greek restaurant in Brisbane, Australia. He had gone there to study hospitality and tourism at the University of Queensland. Cooking with and for his Middle Eastern colleagues spurred him to open Artichoke after he graduated and returned to Singapore.
Despite a rocky start when he opened the restaurant in 2010 – diners here did not understand his take on Middle Eastern food – he stuck to his guns. He let his inner dude and irreverence out. The restaurant started attracting attention from the media and diners.
He parlayed his image as a self-described 'gun-slinging maverick who didn't care about the rules' into a successful business.
Now, he is rocking that boat. The 43-year-old says: 'I'm coming up to 45 soon. I'm not planning to cook in restaurants past the age of 60. It took me 15 years to get here. Can I see myself doing this for the next 15 years and getting to retirement on this one cuisine? I cannot. I don't want to.'
He talks about how difficult it is to keep reinventing Middle Eastern food.
'We have to make our way through 10 old ideas before finding one new idea,' he says.
'Now, we're scraping the middle of the barrel. Not the bottom, but the middle. It's getting harder and harder to find cool, new ideas after putting a creative spin on this cuisine for 15 years. So, I'm thinking, 'How many more versions of hummus can I do? How many more versions of falafel can I do?''
Asked if diners who love his food and have become regulars might feel hard done by, he says: 'I'm hoping we've given people good times in the last 15 years.'
And to those who have yet to discover Artichoke, he adds: 'We've been here for 15 years. If you haven't come in 15 years, why am I banking on you to come in the next six months?'
'Artichoking' pizza
Singapore has had something of a pizza boom in the last few years, with artisanal pies coming at diners in every style imaginable: classic Neapolitan, contemporary Neapolitan, neo-Neapolitan, New York-Neapolitan, San Francisco sourdough, New Haven-New York and Japolitan, among others.
Brands such as L'antica Pizzeria Da Michele, Vincenzo Capuano, Fortuna, Roberta's and Pizza Studio Tamaki jostle alongside home-grown ones like La Bottega Enoteca, Blue Label, Wild Child Pizzette and Goldenroy Sourdough Pizza for a slice of, well, the pizza pie.
Just as he had 'artichoked' Middle Eastern food – he uses the noun as a verb to describe how he puts his spin on food – he has now 'artichoked' pizza.
A big consideration was the Singaporean experience with pizza.
'Our concept of pizza is Pizza Hut, Milano's, Shakey's and Rocky's,' he says. 'It's a crispy-base pizza with a crunch, and lots of toppings that go closer to the edge.'
His pizza will come in two formats – Slabs and Rounds.
The Slab is a hybrid of the Roman al taglio style, with a foccacia-like dough and usually sold in rectangular slices; and the Detroit style, also rectangular, cooked in a pan, with a thick, crisp and chewy crust and cheese spread out to the edges of the pie.
Artichoke's Slab has something a little extra – a half-and-half mix of pecorino and mozzarella cheeses sprinkled on the pan before the dough is placed on top. The pecorino gives the crust flavour, and the mozzarella melts and fries the dough in the oven for a crunchy bottom.
The rectangular pies arrive at the table on metal racks so they stay crisp. Variations will include Margherita, topped with mozzarella and pecorino cheeses, red sauce and basil; and Dirty Duck, topped with Balinese spiced duck and snake beans. Prices are expected to range from $22 to $32. Each pie is cut into six squares.
Artichoke's Green Supreme is stuffed with mushrooms, peas, garlic and spinach, and topped with zucchini, burrata cheese and mint.
ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN
Slabs will also be made into Stacks, split in half horizontally and piled with fillings and toppings. There are two variations – Green Supreme, stuffed with mushrooms, peas, garlic and spinach, and topped with zucchini, burrata cheese and mint; and Meat Supreme, beef Sloppy Joes, corned beef, bacon and tomato cream. Prices will range from $28 to $32 .
Rounds are deep-fried pizza, similar to Pizza Montanara from Naples. At Artichoke, the pizza bases are first deep-fried so they puff up. Then, depending on what goes on them, baked and topped, or topped and baked.
The BAP or Bacon Apple Pie comes with pancetta, apple butter, brie cream, hazelnuts and rosemary.
ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN
Variations include BAP or Bacon Apple Pie, with pancetta, apple butter, brie cream, hazelnuts and rosemary; and Black Bolognese, with spicy octopus masak hitam, squid ink and potato cream. Prices will range from $30 to $34.
Rounding off the menu will be a selection of snacks, including Beef Lasagne Nuggets, and burrata cheese with strawberry tomato kimchi and perilla; plates including fried chicken and Japanese Oyster & Mushroom pasta; and sweets such as cherry pie.
A meal for two might include one snack, two pizzas or plates and a dessert. The average cheque is expected to be $35 to $40 a person – lower than Middle Eastern Artichoke's $69 a person Feed Me menu.
Flipping the script on Artichoke will allow it to open all day and to offer delivery and pickup – both not viable in its current iteration. The restaurant in the River Valley area is surrounded by condominiums.
Rabbit hole
Chef Shen's pizza awakening happened in Osaka in 2017.
After days of eating nothing but Japanese food on a trip there, he decided to walk into a 16-seat place called I Love Pizza. It was the first time he ate Neapolitan pizza.
'I was blown away,' he says. 'I'm like, 'Why am I liking the crust so much?' So, I Googled Neapolitan pizza , and then I went down the rabbit hole.'
What followed was a deep dive into pizza, although he found it difficult to find proper Neapolitan pizza in Singapore. One place he found was Pizza Fabbrica in Haji Lane. He says it serves pies with leopard spots – the rim of the pizza sports charred spots, the hallmark of authentic Neapolitan pizza.
In 2018, he visited 20 pizza restaurants in nine days in Tokyo and, the following year, went on a pizza tour of Bangkok. In 2023, he went to Rome, and then to Caserta, home of I Masanielli, named the top pizzeria in Italy every year since 2019 by the influential 50 Top Pizza guide.
In 2020, he started Small's, a four-seat space within Artichoke, then located in Middle Road, serving pizza omakase. Even then, he was 'artichoking' pizza.
The meal included Neapolitan-style pies and the highlight was Pizza Alla Banh Mi, pizza dough baked, split and stuffed with a mountain of banh mi fillings – Vietnamese charcuterie, pickles, herbs and tomatoes.
He co-owns Baba G's Pizza Place in Seminyak, Bali, with Artichoke head chef Mathew Woon, 41. They serve Neapolitan pizzas there, for a mostly tourist clientele.
Bjorn Shen's pizza will come in two formats – Slabs and Rounds.
ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN
So, the switch to pizza does not come out of the blue, he says. Pivoting seems to come naturally to chef Shen.
Small's, which went from four seats at Artichoke to a full-fledged restaurant in Lavender Street and back to a seven-seat space in Artichoke, has moved away from pizza omakase. It now serves whatever chef Shen fancies. Currently, it is an All-Fish Korean BBQ menu at $145 a person. The next menu is expected to feature beef and kakigori or Japanese-style shaved ice.
Baba G's started out as Babaghanoush in August 2024, serving Middle Eastern barbecue with ingredients from Balinese markets. It became Baba G's Pizza Place in May 2025 . Chef Shen has put in about $200,000, and finds the market there challenging.
He is having better returns from Nep!, a 14-seat natural wine bar in Penang he co-owns with two former Artichoke staff – chef Koh Yee Ming, 31, and Goh Chia Ye, 29, a sommelier. It opened in June 2024 and serves small plate food made with ingredients from the markets there. His $80,000 investment has already paid dividends.
In 15 years of running Artichoke and doing consultancy work in Singapore and abroad for restaurant groups and hotels, he has come to realise the need to diversify.
He says: 'I need to spread my wings out of Singapore. People come to me for consulting gigs here, and I keep telling them I cannot guarantee success. Just because Artichoke's been around for a while, I cannot make your restaurant a success.
'I can't even guarantee that if I open another restaurant in Singapore, it will be a success. There are so many factors stacked against you. One of them is manpower. Without it, we can't do anything, we're just crippled. So, I've been trying to open in places where manpower is a bit more abundant.'
The question now is whether the Artichoke pivot to pizza will work. He says his wife Roxanne Toh, 40, who handles the administrative and human resource side of the business, is fine with it. They have two daughters aged eight and six, and a baby boy is due in August.
He says: 'She knows I have this thing for pizza. I've got a stupid pizza tattoo, you know? She knows.'
For some years, Artichoke used 'Still not dead' as its anniversary tagline. Scrappiness might get a restaurant through its first few years, but then experience must count for something at the 15-year mark.
Chef Shen says: 'If I want to build a lasting thing in Singapore, if I want to really entrench ourselves in the hearts and minds of people over time, it needs to be something that is tailored more to the Singapore taste.'
So, despite his love for Neapolitan pizza, Artichoke will serve what he thinks will intrigue Singaporeans and also resonate with them.
'Thick, crunchy, full of toppings. Not like Neapolitan, where all your 'liao' is in the middle and then the sides are like, whoa, throw away,' he says, using the Hokkien word for ingredients.
None of this is to say he is done flying by the seat of his pants. He is not a gun-slinging maverick for nothing.
On the menu of Artichoke, New School Pizza Parlor, he talks about why it is now serving pizza, ending with 'Let's see if we go another 15 years, or if this was a dumb idea'.
There is also a new tagline: 'Cheating death since 2010.'
Still not dead, all grown up.