Thevar

Thevar is the modern South Indian restaurant of chef Manogren "Mano" Thevar, who trained classically in French kitchens before opening the restaurant in 2019 on Keong Saik Road. It has since relocated to 16 Mohamed Sultan Road in the River Valley area. The kitchen holds two Michelin stars in the Michelin Guide Singapore 2025 and features on the Asia's 50 Best Restaurants list, making it one of the city's most decorated Indian-rooted dining rooms.

The experience centers on a seasonal tasting menu (around S$298) that reworks Chettinad and broader South Indian flavors through refined technique. For drinks, the restaurant runs a deep cellar of more than 400 wine labels with an alcoholic pairing at S$248, and crucially offers a thoughtfully composed non-alcoholic pairing at S$138 for guests who do not drink. Five cocktails are also available at S$28 each. The non-alcoholic pairing is designed to track the courses rather than default to a single juice, giving alcohol-free diners a course-by-course progression alongside the wine drinkers at the table.

The room seats 28 in the main dining hall and adds a chef's table and a private dining room, dressed in terracotta walls and Chettinad-inspired motifs that echo the food. Reservations are essential, and the menu changes seasonally, so the specific non-alcoholic pours rotate with the kitchen's produce.

The non-alcoholic pairing is the reason this room earns a place here rather than the two stars. At S$138 it is priced as a real product — a little over half the S$248 wine flight — and it is poured across the same courses, which is the practical test of whether a kitchen means it. A restaurant that charges three figures for an alcohol-free flight has to defend that price at every course, and cannot fall back on a single juice served twice.

The cooking it accompanies is heavily spiced in ways that reward the format. Chef Mano Thevar trained in French kitchens before opening in 2018, and the menu runs Chettinad and wider South Indian flavours through that discipline: complex masalas, charred meats, and the Mysore-spiced lamb rack that reviewers keep returning to. Spice-forward food is difficult territory for wine and comfortable territory for tea, tamarind, buttermilk and fermented drinks, so the zero-proof flight is arguably the better match rather than the lesser one.

A practical note for non-drinkers: the five cocktails on the list are alcoholic, including a jasmine gin fizz and a coconut negroni, so the pairing rather than the cocktail list is the route through the evening. Book ahead — the main dining hall seats 28, plus a chef's table and a private room, and the menu changes seasonally, so the specific pours rotate with the produce.