The latest refresh at LUCE in Frasers House sharpens rather than shifts its identity — reframing the familiar Italian buffet as a more considered, convivial table anchored in regional cooking.
LUCE has long occupied a specific niche in Singapore’s hotel dining landscape: a dependable, crowd-pleasing Italian buffet that trades in familiarity and comfort over edgy culinary innovation. Its latest iteration — following the reflagging of InterContinental Singapore to Frasers House, a Luxury Collection Hotel — does not disrupt that positioning. Instead, the restaurant has doubled down on what made it popular in the first place.
A convivial, social dining space with a spread that pleases most palates, especially those with Italian leanings.
Under The Luxury Collection banner, the hotel has shifted its emphasis towards narrative, locality and a sense of place that speaks of curated identity over uniform luxury. The refresh at LUCE mirrors this recalibration.
While the idea of Italian conviviality is not new — in fact this is played out at most Italian dining concepts across town — here Chef de Cuisine Giueseppe di Gaetano has designed the buffet less as a checklist of dishes and more as a social table, structured around abundance, rhythm and ease.
In practical terms, this translates into a more considered spread. The core architecture of the rotating buffet remains familiar — seafood on ice, antipasti, pasta, pizza — but the execution leans towards balance rather than sheer excess.
You’re first greeted by towers of fresh seafood when you step into LUCE, flanked on one side by an antipasti room and a live pizza station complete with oven. Deeper in are various islands where the food is laid out by cuisine type; yes, while it is anchored by the regional cuisines of Italy, LUCE serves an array of international guests so you’ll also find representations from Indian, Japanese and Chinese food worlds as well.
The layout allow a degree of movement and interaction that prevents the buffet format from feeling static, but where the refresh feels most relevant is how LUCE allows for Italian authenticity in its food without the caricaturing the traditional trattoria like so many often do. The Italian lens is convincing — unhurried, generous, and designed for sharing — with regional specialties like hand-tossed Roman pinsa, Sicilian-style grilled branzino, Ligurian ragout alla Genovese, the tomato-drenched meatballs of Campania, the Tuscan fish stew that is caciucco, and even Sardinian fregola, among others.
LUCE has always operated in the space between authenticity and accessibility, where Italian flavours are adapted to the expectations of a cosmopolitan Singapore audience. Its latest revamp has simply brought focus to what it truly is: a generous yet considered Italian table in the heart of Singapore’s heritage Bugis district.
LUCE
Address 80 Middle Rd, Frasers House, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Singapore 188966 (Google Maps link)
Opening Hours 12pm to 2.30pm and 6pm to 10.00pm daily
Tel (65) 6825 1008
Web www.lucesingapore.com
Facebook lucerestaurantsg
Instagram @lucerestaurantsg
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