Darren Teoh of Dewakan and Ivan Brehm of Nouri on Friendship, Finding Your Rhythm, and Staying Curious

We sat down with decorated chefs Darren Teoh of Dewakan and Ivan Brehm of Nouri in Singapore for a candid conversation about their storied friendship and craft. 

Like many stories of friendships and relationships in the 21st century, this one began with a DM. Yes, you read that right. Ivan Brehm of Singapore’s one Michelin-starred restaurant Nouri slid into the DMs of one Michelin-starred Dewakan’s Darren Teoh. The reasoning was simple. Brehm was drawn to Teoh’s food and within the blink of an eye, the two are eight collaboration dinners deep in friendship. 

To say this one was born out of mutual respect would be an understatement. Based on our conversation, it’s clear that the pair have a reciprocal understanding and appreciation for each other’s talents. Beyond that, their undeniable synergy, shared zest for knowledge, and complementary characters made for the perfect recipe that has carried them through their cross-border alliance. 

While both Brehm and Teoh are constantly on the ball when it comes to culinary development in their respective cities, they keep their senses of curiosity and adventure sharp, making food that isn’t just tasty but thought-provoking. Behind such precise and needle-moving cuisine are two individuals whose lives just so happen to orbit around the sheer enjoyment of cooking and creating. In this conversation, we take a head-first dive into the inner workings of their friendship and the minds that have catapulted them onto the podiums they stand on today. 

HITTING IT OFF

Like yin and yang, Brehm and Teoh’s personalities complement each other exceedingly well and it shows. Throughout our conversation, they were riffing off each other’s sentences, completing stories, and cracking witty jokes in between answers. “I think we hit it off straightaway,” beams Brehm. “It was really like I’ve known Darren for a while, but it was the first time we met. We’re very different personality-wise, though in sensibilities we are very similar. I’m obviously a goof and consistently expansive, but Darren has the hardest poker face that the world has ever seen and is stoic.”

Teoh also holds similar sentiments, immediately clocking the value in such a friendship. “What compelled and reassured me that this was a worthy relationship for us to invest in was the sensibilities and the sort of methodology that Ivan approaches his food with,” tells Teoh. “It’s very inspiring and made me go ‘who the heck would think of tracing his history, looking at how his roots overlap, and focusing on how food brings people together more than it divides?’ That, for me, was quite phenomenal. Every conversation that we’ve had ever since—about food or not—has always been very invigorating, transcendent, or illuminating.”

Everyone knows becoming a chef of such chops like that of Teoh and Brehm requires a profound level of proficiency in the kitchen, but many chefs are yet to find that secret ingredient that jolts you from the skilled to the sublime. That ingredient is a friendship like this. one It isn’t just one that encourages each other to do better. It is one that pushes them to their culinary limits, complete with chaos, structure, and a heaping of curiosity. “It’s nice to have this one person who can just talk rubbish with you, I suppose,” adds Teoh. 

FINDING THEIR RHYTHM

As travelling with friends for the first time can be a gamble, so is cooking in a kitchen that isn’t yours with another team. Just how does one foster a sense of synergy that not only encourages flow but also energy. After all, working a long shift at a restaurant is a marathon, not a sprint. For Brehm and Teoh, finding their cadence behind the pass boils down to the people they work with, keeping a mutual sense of courtesy and camaraderie. 

“It’s such a delight. Walking into Dewakan is walking into a space, where people are courteous, want you to succeed, and are there to help,” recounts Brehm. “It all permeates through our dynamics as well.” The Nouri chef also recalls “acting a fool” as his way of breaking the ice, chuckling at his own antics. 

Teoh, who is known for his stoic and more introverted demeanor, somehow also echoes this sentiment. “Our kitchens sit on the polar extremes of the character spectrum. When I go to Nouri, it’s convivial. Of course, it’s serious enough when it comes to service, but there’s a lot of high fives and hugging going on, whereas in my kitchen, it’s dead silence—until Ivan pops through the door.”

KITCHEN CHARACTER

Both chefs and their respective kitchens stand firm in their distinct characters, but all rules and pre-existing mannerisms seem to go out the window when they come together. “Both teams are extremely wonderful to work with,” adds Teoh. “This is very true of me and less of Ivan, but when I go to Nouri, I become almost as convivial as they are.” “That is true!,” interjects Brehm. “You’re very outgoing when you’re here. It’s a surprise because all his colourful feathers come out.”

Nevertheless, the duo still stay true to their quest for finding the right flavours and exploring new ways to present them on said collaboration menus. Threading through their differences is this shared dedication to serving food that isn’t just precise but lyrical. “I should also note that [Ivan] isn’t any less pursuant of quality—that we can all agree on,” clarifies Teoh. “Because despite the carnival that he brings, we’re still pursuing that same sort of high level technically and storytelling that makes our restaurants what they are today.”

“It’s really important to leave your ego at the door when you’re sharing a space with somebody that you care about, appreciate, and have respect for,” concludes Brehm. “And I feel the same energy coming from him. The reality is that a great chunk of what I’m doing is because I want my friend to be happy. A substantial amount of the success in making a dish is related to the theory of things like love, care and the desire to please somebody, which is also the very foundation that cooking begins with. That elemental part of the job is part of the reason why this partnership works when we’re approaching these menus and the exercise of creating these dishes is fortified by that energy. “

THE MAKING OF MAGIC

As their energies temper each other off when they join kitchens, a sort of magic happens on their menus. In an age of virality and trends, it’s safe to say that Teoh and Brehm plainly do not give a *bleep*. It is this inherent focus on their own craft and how they can improve that has given their respective restaurants the space and fuel to grow in the trajectory that they have been on for the last few years. 

When asked how they find common ground to create a menu that speaks to both ethe, Brehm answered with a witty “it seems like an accident”, to which Teoh echoes, “Yup, mostly an accident.” Brehm then switches gears and earnestly says with not an ounce of imperiousness, “I think we’re just good at our jobs”—a sentiment that I can wholeheartedly agree with solely based on the conversation we were having. “We’ve been doing this for a long time and we’re heavily opinionated. Doing this job is almost the equivalent of doing to a doctor and him knowing exactly what to do,” continues Brehm. “When you ask that doctor how they got to that conclusion, it’s quite simply because it is their job.” 

Teoh also elaborates by noting the nature of their gastronomic work and how being in a grey area of cuisine can be something positive. “Both our cuisines are highly explorative,” explains Teoh. “And the two of us—I’d like to think—are quite well-read and we have a very diverse, broad spectrum of knowledge. We’re also naturally curious people. That curiosity, coupled with our experience and that fact that we can actually cook, gives us a versatility that allows us to do more.”

PRACTICING CURIOSITY

While many are driven by the idea of monetary success and even glamourising their careers, Teoh and Brehm stay on top of their games by keeping their curiosity alive. Their conversations extend beyond the walls of their restaurants and cover topics that aren’t limited to the confines of cuisine. The constant learning and absorbing of new information and philosophies is a perennial task.

“For me, it’s a lot more about developing yourself as a human, then the work follows,” articulates Brehm. “I spend a lot more time with the team talking about things like attitude, communication, mindfulness, and just general emotional stuff than I do with technical bits. They are, of course, explained and we’re consistently perfecting things, but they’re just not the focus. The focus is on what you bring into the exchange wholeheartedly.”

Teoh also reverberates the same sentiment, honing in on the importance of keeping inspiration alive in the kitchen that overrules performance anxiety. “Seven or eight years ago, if there was no joy in our kitchen, people were not motivated by anything except fear of failure or the pressure of doing well,” prefaces Teoh. But tides have since turned and Teoh’s Dewakan kitchen relies on the stripped back, unsullied joy of cooking. 

“It’s been my own reckoning and unravelling that everything we do at the restaurant is not driven by the technical aspects of cooking,” reflects Teoh. “Instead, it is about bringing joy back to the restaurant and we do that by encouraging learning from different things like how to run a business or leadership. Just take a moment to explore something outside of your work so you can cook better because cooking is fun and is about nourishing people. That’s also why family meals are a big deal at the restaurant because it’s an opportunity to cook without following this machinist idea of what the dishes at the restaurant are supposed to be.”

A COOKING CACHE

Though invisible in nature, friendship is an extremely powerful and, in the case of these two chefs, knowledgeable force. It is what keeps them cooking together time and time again, which isn’t something we see in the world of collaborations. Most of the time, four-hands dinners are a one-and-done sort of thing, but in the case of Teoh and Brehm, their collaborative dinners have become somewhat of a time capsule. The menus immortalise the different stages in not only their friendship but also their culinary narratives. 

“Every menu that we’ve done has tested the boundaries of the direction that we want to go in,” opens Teoh. “Everything that is on these menus are accomplishments in themselves.” Speaking to the uniqueness of his friendship with Brehm, he also adds, “I feel like every dish that we’ve made has been meaningful. With a lot of respect to the other craftsmen that I’ve worked with, it’s not often that the dishes themselves become meaningful.”

“Honestly, we do a lot of collaborations here at Nouri—it’s very much in our DNA,” attests Brehm. I say this with deep respect for all my friends that I cook and work with, when we put these dishes out there and then I feel like it is greater than just techniques and beautiful dishes put together when working with Darren. It’s really like a continuum there. There’s a—I don’t want to use the word energy because people are going to think I’m a hippie—but there’s like an energy to it. It gives a different aura than others.”

For two chefs who seem to have reached the stars (literally) and cemented themselves as pillars of the Southeast Asian dining sphere, one would think there isn’t much left to achieve. But anyone who knows chefs knows that it’s about much more than the accolades and the recognition—although this is not to deny their significance. “I just want to be present in what I do,” affirms Brehm. “It won’t be a question of percentage [of improvement], even though growth is progressive. If I just focus on this every day, things are bound to be good, because I’m not thinking outside of that framework. The easiest answer to the question ‘what’s next for you?’ would be: dinner service.”

“I can’t think of a way I could measure my progress because there are some days where I’m not flying and others where I’m just crawling,” notes Teoh. “There are also days where I’m just comatose, staring at the wall and wondering what the hell I’m doing with my life. But then I just have to get up and go to work, where I do my job and I do it the best I can. Then, I go home and sleep—and repeat. But with each day you just try to be a little bit better and, like Ivan said, just being present is more than enough on the list of things for you to do.”

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