4 days ago
Chef Sam Aisbett's restaurant Akuna turns 2 and has a Michelin star for the second year running
When I last spoke to Sam Aisbett in 2023, he was on the cusp of opening his restaurant Akuna in Ho Chi Minh City. He didn't seem particularly fazed by the endeavour since he'd learnt, he said, from the many mistakes he'd made during his three-year run at Whitegrass, the restaurant he founded in Singapore in 2015.
Fast forward two years, and it seems Aisbett and I remember things differently. 'At that time, I hadn't been working for I don't know how long, so I started to doubt myself,' he said in his friendly, rapid-fire tone. 'I think I was panicking. I was like, do I even know how to cook anymore? And I didn't want to do the same thing [as I did at Whitegrass], so I was scared that I'd just end up cooking what I was familiar with.'
Those fears were put to rest when Akuna was awarded its first Michelin star even before its first year was up. Last month, the restaurant retained that star for the second year, a dream for most chefs, since a Michelin nod has been known to play a sizable role in bringing diners through a restaurant's doors.
This wasn't Aisbett's first entry into the Michelin constellation. He received his first star for Whitegrass in 2017. 'So of course I was happy when Akuna won our first star, but I thought I didn't care. Since we started, all I wanted was to cook good food and get the restaurant busy. But when I came back to the kitchen [that day], some of the young chefs were crying. They were so excited. And I thought, this means so much to them. They've probably spent their lives dreaming of eating in a Michelin-starred restaurant, and now to actually work in one… That was just amazing.
'So I told them that this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing that we can all be part of… but now, people have even higher expectations when they come to our restaurant, so we have to step up what we're doing.'
What typically follows is pressure to not only retain that star but also reach for a few more. But Aisbett isn't biting. 'When all you care about is getting an award, then you sort of lose focus on the fact that it's important to make sure guests are happy,' he said. 'The award's good for your ego, but, you know, if it happens, it happens. If it doesn't,' he threw his hands up in the air and laughed, 'Yeah…'
At 42, Aisbett is settled enough to understand that the drive to give guests 'the best experience of their lives' is enough to keep standards at his restaurant consistently high. He's had to shed some mindsets and learn to relax his grip on controlling every aspect of the work. 'And I'm having fun! I'm not taking everything so seriously anymore.'
Transformation is often hard, but learning to give his team more room to express their curiosity and creativity has improved his quality of life and the restaurant's offerings. 'Before, no one could change anything. It had to be me, me, me. And now I realise how stupid that is,' he continued. 'Like, I usually have an idea of how I would plate a dish, and then one of my team plates it differently and I think, 'My god, that's so smart, so simple'. And it eats so much better than if we'd done it like I was going to. The young chefs have such great ideas, and not trying to control everything means I have more time to do other things.'
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Like considering the possibilities of opening a more casual concept, learning about the Vietnamese ingredients he hasn't yet had a chance to use, and breaking some rules. 'You know, you get trained that a restaurant has to be like this,' he said, forming two straight lines with his hands. 'I don't know who the hell came up with that rule. There are no rules. We can do it how we want to. I play the music I like (Prince, Michael Jackson), because we have an open kitchen and if people were to come to my house, that's the same music I'd be playing.
'The star is a nice reminder that we're doing something right,' he said, coming back to the point of our conversation. 'But the real win is coming in every day, still excited to cook.'
