Chi Spacca Singapore takes Osteria Mozza's old room

Chi Spacca Singapore opens at the end of October in the Hilton Singapore Orchard room that Osteria Mozza left at the end of July, and the deal runs for one year only.

The grill house is Nancy Silverton's, from Los Angeles, and this is the brand's first room in Asia. It takes the fifth floor at 333 Orchard Road with about 105 seats, according to trade reports, and inherits the wood-fired oven its predecessor could not take with it.

Osteria Mozza served its last night at the Hilton on 31 July and reopened on 7 September at ION Orchard, a few minutes up the same street, under head chef Ammie Khoo. The new room is larger; the kitchen there could not house the oven, which is how the old one came to need a tenant.

A residency ends on a date, which is a cheaper way to be wrong.

What Chi Spacca Singapore will not serve

The menu is built on live fire and whole cuts meant to be shared, with savoury pies filled with lobster or bone marrow, Focaccia di Recco, a chicken pot pie and a Tomahawk pork chop. There is no pasta and no pizza, which is the point. "There will not be any pasta and there will not be any pizza at Chi Spacca," Silverton said.

Mains are quoted at S$50 to S$100, with an average bill of around S$70 a head. Ashley So, previously at Sospiri on Central Boulevard, is reported as head chef.

A year on the clock

The operator is OUE Restaurants. Its chief operating officer, Andrew Ing, said the residency gives the company "flexibility" and "a measured way to build awareness" along with real-time operating data before anything longer is signed.

That is a polite description of a hedge, and a reasonable one on Orchard Road, where rents are high and a grill house with no pasta is an untested proposition in a mall-hotel corridor built on familiar names.

Silverton has been busy elsewhere: she opened a steakhouse in rebuilt Palisades Village earlier this year. A residency has one advantage over a lease. It ends on a date, which is a cheaper way to be wrong.