This new restaurant at the National Gallery is Chef Damian D’Silva’s ode to Eurasian cuisine, a delicious tribute to legacy, family, and a rarely celebrated culture. I’ll admit it, until recently, I couldn’t confidently tell you what Eurasian food tasted like. Sure, Singapore’s food scene is a world class melting pot, but Eurasian fare often feels like the secret cousin hidden in plain sight. Few restaurants bother to showcase its hearty, hybrid flavours, and even fewer patrons actively seek it out. Enter ‘Gilmore & Damian D’Silva’, a culinary sanctuary for this overlooked cuisine. Nestled within the historic halls of the National Gallery, this 68-seater restaurant isn’t just a meal, it’s an immersion into Chef Damian’s family stories, his memories, and a near forgotten slice of Singapore’s gastronomic identity.
Heritage Served Warm
The restaurant is a deeply personal homage to Chef Damian D’Silva’s late grandfather, Gilmore D’Silva, fondly known as ‘Pop’. This is no ordinary tribute, ‘Pop’ was the sole custodian of the Supreme Court, the very building that now houses the National Gallery. It’s a full-circle moment that sees Chef Damian returning to the place that shaped his childhood. At age 11, young Damian watched and learned as his grandfather prepared hearty Eurasian and Chinese family meals for everyone from court staff to visiting judges. Decades later, these recipes have been revived with loving precision at the 68 seater restaurant that echoes not only the building’s stately past but also the enduring warmth of a family kitchen. The interiors are both elegant and soulfully personal. Aged silverware from the D’Silva family gleams on stately shelves, while black and white photographs whisper family histories into the space. Yet, the true heart of Gilmore & Damian D’Silva is its food, an homage to Eurasian cooking with a comforting nod to Chinese home dining, reflecting Chef Damian’s dual heritage.
Nostalgia, Served Daily
It’s not often you stumble upon a restaurant that feels like both a history lesson and a raucous family dinner rolled into one. But ‘Gilmore & Damian D’Silva’ is precisely that, a culinary ode to the Eurasian kitchen, equal parts nostalgic and novel. I arrived after hearing whispers of its Christmas Debal, a devil’s curry decked out for the holidays, and let me tell you, it stole the show. Laden with cocktail sausages, roast pork, and laced with the fire of fried chilies and old ginger, it’s the sort of stew that had me shamelessly mopping the last smears from my bowl with crunchy baguette. The achar on the side? A sharp, citrusy slap that made me grateful for acidity’s existence.
Chef Damian doesn’t stop at textbook Eurasian dishes. His ‘Teochew ngoh hiang’, wrapped in delicate caul fat, surprised me with its airy bite. And just as I was slipping into a food coma, the sugee cake arrived, light, boisterous, and topped with Chantilly cream, like the encore you didn’t realize you needed. Damian, part chef, part custodian of memory, is reviving flavours once guarded like secrets.
Here, they whisper loudly. So, does Gilmore & Damian D’Silva aim to single handedly revive Eurasian cuisine in Singapore? Perhaps. But more than that, it invites the hungry and curious to pull up a chair and savour a missing chapter of the island’s storied foodscape. You’ll leave with a full belly and, if you’re lucky, a new appreciation for a culture you didn’t even know you were missing.
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Fact Box
Where: Gilmore & Damian D’silva is at 1 St Andrew’s Rd, #01-02/03, National Gallery, Singapore 178957
Call: +6597100237
