11 Westside opens its first Singapore location

11 Westside, the Californian-Mexican taco brand born in Hong Kong, opens its first Singapore location at Asia Square Tower 1, with 221 seats split between an indoor dining room and a pet-friendly courtyard.

The brand launched in Kennedy Town, Hong Kong, under chef Esdras Ochoa, the Los Angeles cook known as the "Taco King" for his Baja California-style menus. Singapore is 11 Westside's first outpost anywhere in Asia outside that original site, a jump from a converted terrace in Kennedy Town to a tower lobby in the Marina Bay financial district.

The new restaurant sits at #01-05, Asia Square Tower 1, 8 Marina View, near Shenton Way MRT. Middle Class Singapore counts 133 seats indoors, plus 88 more on an alfresco terrace that allows pets, bringing capacity to 221 — a scale suited to the office towers around it.

Two hundred and twenty-one seats bet that CBD workers will sit down for tacos, not queue for them.

11 Westside's seat count in Marina View

The room is built around a central courtyard bar, with arched walkways meant to read as a Mexican hacienda rather than a mall food court. Tortillas, salsas and sauces are made daily on site, using masa flour and chillies imported from Mexico rather than local substitutes, according to Tatler Asia and Middle Class Singapore.

The menu runs on the Baja fish taco, carne asada and al pastor, alongside pollo asado and a vegetable option, per 11westside.sg and Middle Class Singapore. Tacos start around S$6, most mains and sharing dishes fall between S$9 and S$25, and sharing plates run as high as S$34 — Middle Class Singapore lists a charcoal-grilled octopus at that top price.

The Hong Kong original, on the ground floor of the Hudson building in Kennedy Town, opened on a smaller footprint with picnic tables on an open terrace. Ochoa described that debut as filling a gap for Mexican cooking in Hong Kong; the Singapore version scales the same recipe up for a market where Mexican restaurants remain rare next to Japanese or Italian openings.

A crowded corner of the CBD

Asia Square Tower 1 sits inside a financial district already stacked with lunch and after-work concepts, from Osteria Mozza's recent expansion nearby to steakhouses and sushi counters competing for the same office crowd. A Mexican brand betting on 221 seats and daily-made tortillas is a wager that CBD workers will treat tacos as a sit-down option, not just a quick lunch.

11 Westside has not said whether Singapore is a one-off or the start of a wider Southeast Asia push. For now, the numbers — two cities, 221 seats, one imported bag of masa flour at a time — are the only expansion plan on record.