Why you should experience Singapore in Milan, Italy.
Singapore is an enduring Chinese restaurant where Washington's residential character, Via Foppa's neighborhood dining culture, Milan's first generations of Chinese restaurateurs and a family tradition extending across several Asian restaurants converge west of the historic center.
Set along Via Vincenzo Foppa near Via Giorgio Washington and just steps from the streets leading toward the Tortona district, the restaurant occupies a predominantly residential part of western Milan where apartment buildings, independent shops and local restaurants create a markedly calmer rhythm than the nearby Navigli. Red accents, dark timber furniture, Chinese decorative pieces and closely arranged tables establish the compact dining room, with white tablecloths and traditional ornament giving meals a formality that has become increasingly uncommon among newer fast-casual Asian restaurants. Lunch moves through concise combinations of rice, dumplings and cooked dishes before dinner encourages broader sharing across soups, poultry, beef, seafood and vegetables, with platters circulating through the table in the communal pattern long associated with Chinese dining. The result is a deeply established neighborhood restaurant whose traditional room and sharing-oriented service preserve a recognizable chapter of Milan's Chinese restaurant culture on Via Foppa.
What you should know about Singapore.
Singapore is best known for belonging to a pioneering Milanese Chinese restaurant family whose work eventually produced several distinct Asian dining concepts across the city. The family behind Via Foppa included a mother from Wenzhou and a Singaporean father, giving the restaurant's name a direct connection to the household's transnational background. Their Singapore restaurant was already an established Milanese business during the 1980s, and the operating company associated with the Via Foppa address dates to 1988. The parents subsequently expanded into Bussarakham, devoted to Thai cooking, and Dou in Piazza Napoli, turning the original restaurant into the beginning of a broader family career in Milanese hospitality. Their son Mauro Yap, born in 1986, grew up as the second generation of that restaurant family in Milan. Yap eventually pursued a separate project with his wife Elisa, herself from Wenzhou. Their search for a chef brought them to Chang Liu, born in Yangzhou in 1988, whose professional path had moved through China, Cividale del Friuli and Lignano Sabbiadoro before stages with Daniel Boulud in Beijing and René Redzepi's Noma. Liu later became a finalist on the second Italian season of Hell's Kitchen in 2015, reached the Italian final of S.Pellegrino Young Chef in 2016 and spent more than three years with Yoji Tokuyoshi. Mauro and Elisa Yap joined Liu to open Serica in October 2018, translating the family's restaurant inheritance into a new Sino-Italian project one generation after Singapore. Via Foppa continued independently through that evolution and remains associated with Xiaoyun Chi in its current operation. The restaurant still occupies number 40 in 2026, making Singapore the surviving starting point of a family history that later extended through Thai cooking, Dou and the more experimental work of Mauro Yap and Chang Liu.
Steamed meat dumplings provide a soft opening before grilled versions expose the same filled parcel to direct heat, creating a browned base and firmer exterior around the savory center. Hot-and-sour soup changes texture through broth and introduces vinegar and chile, then crab-and-asparagus soup moves toward a gentler seafood preparation. Singapore Duck supplies the restaurant's namesake specialty and leads into a broader duck sequence encompassing aromatic roast, pineapple, Chinese mushrooms with bamboo and a crisp fried preparation. Chicken develops the next stage through curry, Kung Pao, almonds and cashews, allowing spice, nuts and sauce to alter the same meat through markedly different combinations. Beef continues through curry before seafood shifts the table toward prawns, with sweet-and-sour preparations bringing sugar and acidity into the wok. Cantonese rice supplies a mild grain accompaniment capable of absorbing those stronger sauces, and soy or rice noodles introduce another starch through their softer, more elastic texture. Fried ice cream closes through temperature contrast as a hot exterior surrounds a frozen center. Singapore develops the meal through the classic sequencing of a long-established Chinese dining room, moving from steamed and grilled parcels through soup, duck, poultry and seafood before rice, noodles and a hot-cold dessert complete the shared table.
How to fold Singapore into your trip.
Singapore works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing western Milan from medieval canal-side devotion through early twentieth-century manufacturing into the conversion of industrial territory for contemporary culture.
Begin at San Cristoforo sul Naviglio, where an older church reconstructed in 1192 was joined by a fifteenth-century ducal chapel built under Gian Galeazzo Visconti after the plague of 1399. The complex had acquired a pilgrim hospital in 1364, commemorated Visconti victory over the Armagnacs through the newer chapel and later received Ludovico il Moro when he met Beatrice d'Este there in 1491, concentrating religious, dynastic and travel history beside the Naviglio Grande. Continue to Ex Ansaldo, whose industrial complex originated with Roberto Züst in 1904 and expanded across the blocks between Via Tortona, Via Bergognone, Via Stendhal and Via Savona. Successive additions enlarged the factory through the early twentieth century before Ansaldo acquired it during the 1960s for locomotive, railway-carriage and tram production; Milan purchased the complex around 1990 as manufacturing gave way to a new cultural chapter. Conclude at Mudec Museo delle Culture, conceived after Milan launched the conversion of the former Ansaldo site in 1999 and David Chipperfield Architects won the international design competition. The museum opened during Expo 2015 after a fifteen-year project, placing Milan's ethnographic collections around a luminous central agorà within a 23,000-square-meter intervention that joined new architecture with surviving factory buildings. The progression moves from Visconti patronage and pilgrimage at San Cristoforo through Züst and Ansaldo's manufacturing complex into Chipperfield's Mudec, tracing the religious, industrial and cultural development of the western Milanese territory surrounding Singapore.
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