Waku Ghin opens a four-seat counter and a S$250 early menu
Tetsuya Wakuda's Singapore restaurant adds Hanare, a six-course counter for four guests, and Five at Five, a two-hour Chef's Table menu with lobster and Ohmi Wagyu.
Waku Ghin, Tetsuya Wakuda's restaurant at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, launched two shorter formats on 19 October: Five at Five, a five-course menu at S$250++, and Hanare, a six-course counter with four seats at S$288++.
The restaurant holds one star in the 2026 MICHELIN Guide and sits on the second level of The Shoppes. Its Chef's Table and The Bar stay in place; the new formats add an earlier, cheaper way in and a far smaller room. The prices are worth setting against the range of our best restaurants in Singapore list, which runs from S$6 to S$620.
Five at Five at Waku Ghin
Four seats is not a pose here: it is how many diners one fish's best cuts can feed.
Five at Five is served nightly from 5pm to 7pm at the Chef's Table. The autumn menu opens with a broth of seasonal fish, followed by seasonal sashimi, usually chutoro. A Canadian lobster is then cooked on the teppan in front of the guest and finished with garlic and tarragon butter and croutons.
The main course is Ohmi Wagyu from Daikichi, a producer in Shiga Prefecture that, according to the restaurant, raises the cattle exclusively for Wakuda on a dedicated diet. It is seared on a plancha and served with matsutake, eggplant, garlic chips, salad, rice, soup and pickles. A light seasonal dessert closes the meal, and the dishes change with the seasons.
Hanare, four seats and rare cuts
Hanare, Japanese for a smaller building set apart from the main house, occupies a cherry wood-lined room away from the main dining room. Wakuda writes the menu; Shuji Yoshitaki, who trained at the Kyoto kaiseki restaurant Gion Maruyama, where the two chefs met, cooks it at the counter. The six courses change daily with the morning's produce.
The size has a practical reason. Waku Ghin says four seats let the kitchen buy fish in very small quantities and serve cuts that each fish yields for only a handful of diners, such as tai no kama, the sea bream collar, and engawa, the fin muscle of flatfish. Hanare opens Tuesday to Saturday from 5pm, and the restaurant asks guests to book in advance.
The double plus on both prices means service charge and GST are added to the bill. Singapore's high end has spent the autumn reshaping its formats: Takeshi Araki, formerly of Esora, has just opened Ao, a smaller room than his old one. Waku Ghin moves in the same direction without changing address: fewer courses, fewer seats and a menu that, by its own rules, will look different by winter.
