Na Oh

A three-Michelin-star chef, a car factory and a four-course lunch, in that order of surprise.

Na Oh is the best reason we know to spend a weekend lunch in Jurong West: Korean home cooking from Corey Lee, the chef behind Benu in San Francisco, on Level 3 of the Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Centre. Go with someone who likes cars, or someone who likes Korean food done with real precision, and book the free factory tour on the same day. The compromise is distance and planning: it is a trek from town, and this is not a walk-in kind of place.

Lee was the first Korean chef to earn three Michelin stars, and Na Oh, which opened in June 2024, is his first project in Southeast Asia. The name means “moving from inside out” in Korean, and his pitch at launch was modest: “a casual family restaurant” using products and technique usually kept for fine dining. Nobody expects to eat well at a car plant, which is exactly why the surprise lands.

The room is calm and spacious, with hanji paper on the walls and handcrafted tableware. There are about 40 seats under high ceilings, glass walls looking out over the Jurong West estate, and the house jang, Korea's fermented sauces, ageing in clay jars by the entrance. The industrial estate outside could be in another country.

The menu is a short seasonal prix fixe of four courses that changes through the year. The 2024 summer menu ran from homemade tofu with naturally aged soy sauce to a buckwheat and mugeunji pancake (mugeunji being a mellow, non-spicy aged kimchi) with greens from the building's own smart farm, a two-storey robotic operation that Hyundai says produces more than 30kg of fresh produce a day. The main course is a jinjitsang-style meal with a choice; that season it included samgyetang, Pyongyang-style cold buckwheat noodles and stone-pot rice with fish. The buckwheat pancake and jinjitsang-style meals have carried into the 2026 menu, and the current set price is in the facts box.

Drinks are short and Korean: in 2024 the list ran to an omija highball, aged soju and makgeolli. If makgeolli is on when you go, order it; it is the right partner for the pancake.

How to do it well: book a lunch slot through SevenRooms as soon as the window opens (Na Oh says bookings open 30 days ahead), book the guided tour of the centre separately, and make a half-day of it rather than a dash. Lunch is the better plan than dinner for the tour and for daylight over the estate. Check the hours box for the days it opens before you set off west, because the journey is the one part of the day that can't be undone.

Good to know Na Oh is in Jurong West, well away from the city centre, so plan the journey. Its page says bookings open 30 days ahead via SevenRooms and walk-ins are typically not accepted; tours of the centre are booked separately. Check the restaurant's page for current menus, hours and tour details.

Na Oh | Level 3, Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Centre Singapore, 2 Bulim Link, Singapore 649674