CHEF
about
Global Culinary Odyssey
Gabriel’s interest in cooking started when he was very young. He would spend time after school in the kitchen watching his mum preparing meals for his family.
He started experimenting with different cuisines on his own about 10 years ago. He would watch cooking shows, read cook books and also patronize restaurants with good food reviews. When he traveled, he would dine in different restaurants especially across Europe, US and Japan to try different ways of cooking by renowned Chefs.
He fell in love with Italian cuisine due to its simplicity and genuine flavor from the fresh seasonal ingredients. He also finds the harmonization of different flavors and textures, simply authentically amazing. As he continued to experiment, he started to develop his own cooking style and create his own dishes.
Encouragingly, he received many compliments from friends whom he hosted at home for festive meals. This, together with his passion in continuing to experiment with and create new dishes, led him into pursuing the Cuoco (Chef) Certificate from Chef Academy in Terni Italy in February 2014, followed by an internship at The Kingham Plough, an award-winning English fine dining gastropub in Oxfordshire village of Kingham, England.
He was very impressed with Chef Academy’s educators and their strong passions in both cooking and teaching. Everyone brought with them very different and unique cooking techniques as well as different styles in plating their dishes. Their abundant knowledge and experience in the culinary industry greatly exposed Gabriel to the many different aspects of culinary art.
Gabriel’s internship at The Kingham Plough was very insightful and practical. Under the guidance of Executive Chef Emily Watkins and Head Chef Ben Duller, he learnt so much in just 3 months. This was also where he started to realize that Chef profession is a really tough career to pursue, and one should only do so if one had strong passion and conviction.
Upon his return in August 2024, he started operating and hosting private degustation dinners with wine pairing at his own home in Singapore. This was a fairly new concept at that time. In the meantime, he also took the opportunity to work as CDP (Chef de partie) at Forlino (an Italian fine dining restaurant in Singapore). From November 2014, for the next 12 months, Gabriel worked hard to observe his colleagues and hone his skills, while continuing with his private dining service.
It was from this private dining business that Gabriel established bonds with a loyal group of customers who enjoyed his culinary creations. Due to space constraints at home, he was only able to accommodate up to six persons at any given time. As the demand to host larger group increased, he decided to further live his dream by setting up a restaurant which offers a similarly cosy and relaxed ambience like his home while providing tasty dishes and joy to his guests, and 8picure was born.
