This Sustainable Restaurant In Dempsey Hill Is A Breath Of Fresh Air

Sustainability is a term that gets bandied about left, right and centre across industries including the restaurant world, but few are actually walking the talk. AIR Circular Campus and Cooking Club (CCCC)—a restaurant, circular campus, and cooking club—is one place that looks at the big picture.

The relatively new kid on the block at Dempsey Hill is the brainchild of Ronald Akili, co-founder of Potato Head; Matthew Orlando of Amass, and Will Goldfarb of Room4Dessert. AIR, which stands for Awareness, Impact, and Responsibility, comes through in the restaurant’s sustainable ethos. For starters, it plates up contemporary Southeast Asian and European dishes along with freshly farmed ingredients from its edible garden, run by urban farming social enterprise City Sprouts. 

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The architecture

Designed by award-winning architecture firm OMA, the project occupies a sprawling 4,000m2 footprint that includes an expansive green space and a two-storey barracks complex that was once a clubhouse for civil servants. Here, architecture clarifies, through explicit interventions, the idea of transparency on all fronts—from the ingredients to the kitchen and dining to the exterior. A 100m walkway, organic in form, seamlessly blends with lush greenery and marks the beginning of an experiential journey—visitors can directly enter AIR, explore the meandering paths of the garden, or stroll onto the lawn for a picnic and partake in various activities such as the Farmers’ Market while enjoying drinks from the adjacent bar area.

The path extends into the interior of the building while maintaining its distinctive curve and material, highlighting the blurring of indoor and outdoor spaces. This intentional transparency is also reflected in the front façade featuring ribbon windows that open up views to the lawn, and a similarly open layout inside where you can look at how your food is being prepared in the kitchen.

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The furniture

All fixtures and furniture were designed by Spanish product designer Andreu Carulla using recycled timber and plastic bottles made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) sourced from a former art installation, as well as styrofoam that is commonly used in takeaway packaging in Singapore. Modularity, a key concept in sustainable manufacturing processes, has been employed in the construction of the dining tables, allowing flexibility for communal dining and larger groups. The team also tapped Henry Ng, Singapore’s last lion dance craftsman, to craft ceiling lights out of paper mache, bamboo and glue.

The food

When it comes to the food, expect the unexpected as Orlando and Goldfarb transform ingredients that would typically be discarded into delectable dishes. My personal favourites? The Fermented Cassava Bread that comes with a generous serving of Whipped Mushroom XO Butter; the Whole Coral Grouper for Two that includes a fish head rillette, crisp fish bone lavash, and grouper confit with a green onion and black garlic vinaigrette; and the Re-Incarnated “Chocolate” that mixes the by-products of cocoa husks, cascara (the husk surrounding the coffee fruit that is discarded in the process of coffee making) and coconut flesh with cascara mousse and banana skin caramel to yield a decadent dessert.

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Beyond the kitchen

The chef duo’s uncompromising commitment to minimising food waste extends beyond the kitchen. The research and development space housed on the second floor will be a hub for culinary innovation, while the cooking school is set to offer immersive workshops and programmes that aim to spark deeper conversations around the philosophy and techniques behind the delicious food.

AIR CCCC is located 25B Dempsey Rd, Singapore 249670