- Pristina Mok has worked at some of Singapore’s top Michelin-star restaurants like Odette and Zen.
- But in 2023, she quit the big leagues and opened a small fine-dining restaurant in her home.
- Now, she serves up Southeast Asian-inspired dishes to 24 guests weekly and is happier than ever.
As 7:30 p.m. drew close, Pristina Mok set her dining table for eight guests, assembled gold cutlery, dimmed the lights, and sliced up some turbot fish.
From the quaint, homely atmosphere, it looked like a dinner party with old friends. But this was the first time she would meet her guests.
This is Fragment — a modern Southeast Asian fine-dining restaurant located in Mok’s two-bedroom public housing home on the island’s western coast. And the 28-year-old serves the food, plated fine-dining style, right out of her home kitchen.
Quitting the restaurant grind
Mok’s culinary journey started when she was 19. She joined the team at Odette, a three-Michelin-star modern French restaurant at the National Gallery of Singapore.
After a few years at Odette, she worked at Zen, a three-Michelin-star restaurant serving Nordic dishes with Asian influences. She also had stints at restaurants located inside luxury hotels like W Sentosa and Raffles Hotel.
Mok said the adrenaline rush used to keep her going through long, 14 to 16-hour days in the kitchen.
“But as you start to grow older and you advance further into your career, your body starts to give up on you,” Mok said.
She questioned if she could last another 10 or 20 years working on the line.
“My wrist was strained because we carry sauté pots a lot. And especially when you’re so busy, you don’t really think about how heavy it is,” Mok said.
In 2023, she quit her job as a sous chef at Singapore’s Raffles Hotel.
She first became interested in private dining during the pandemic. And when she bought an apartment with her husband, Lionel Lim, the idea for Fragment finally panned out.
She started hosting guests in February, and her schedule is booked through the end of the year.
Fine dining, apartment-style
Upon entering Fragment, guests are often greeted by Pebble, Mok’s poodle.
Mok seats eight guests three times a week, from Thursday to Saturday, for a 2.5-hour-long meal. Her eight-course menus, refreshed every three months, are priced at $130 before service taxes.
Her June menu consisted of dishes made from Hokkaido scallops, octopus and pork jowl, and roasted quail.
Her husband, who works in sales, helps her with service after work.
A casual, homely twist on fine dining
Mok does not start service until all the guests have arrived. People are given a 7:30 p.m. arrival time, and the first courses start rolling out 30 minutes later.
Mok also tries to keep the experience casual. When BI visited Fragment, one of the couples dining there brought their golden retriever and their newborn baby in a stroller.
All the guests were barefoot, as is customary for visitors to Asian households.
Mok told BI that her guests are mostly millennials in finance and banking. She also encourages guests — who may be sitting down at her table together for the first time — to interact and make connections.
Scaling down has its drawbacks
However, running her own restaurant from her home as a one-woman show hasn’t been easy, either.
“The other day, I fell sick, and I didn’t have anyone that could cover my shift or could cover me,” she said. “And I had to, unfortunately, cancel or reschedule the guests.”
She also doesn’t have access to restaurant-capacity kitchen equipment. The couple had to buy three home-sized refrigerators instead because the ones used in restaurants use too much power, she said.
And at the end of the night, her husband washes all the dishes by hand as the pair have yet to purchase a dishwasher.
Mok also has to deal with everything from procuring the groceries to paying her suppliers and balancing the books herself, which can get very difficult “when the work piles up,” she said.
Another thing she said she hadn’t anticipated about the job was how intensely lonely it would be.
“It’s difficult being alone like 90% of the time,” she said. “I live, and I work, and I sleep here,” she told BI.
But Mok said the freedom of being her own boss is worth it.
“Fragment means piecing the different parts of my life together to create something that is unique and different,” she said.
“I love having my own business and doing private dining, and I have more control of my time,” she added.
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