We were lucky to catch up with Anne Schot recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Anne, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

For years, in various global roles, I was travelling two-thirds of my time. In my last role, as the global COO for an Oil & Gas practice, I was in the US every other six weeks. When the pandemic hit in 2020, I was locked into a study with a screen, a headset and a mobile, and on team calls day and most of the night (given the time differences). When my contract came up for renewal, I thought long and hard about it and decided that I did not want to do this any longer. But then, what is next? For someone who worked in a corporate environment for over 35 years, doing nothing was not an option.

Working in an Oil & Gas practice means you are frequently confronted with climate activists. And yes, they are right, the O&G industry has a severe impact on the environment, but they are not the only industry that has. Other industries too have a profound impact on climate change and global warming and the animal agriculture industry is notorious in that respect. The more I investigated this polluting industry, the more appalled I got with it – and while I had not been eating meat products for many years – in the summer of 2020, on my 60th birthday, I decided never to eat any animal product again, ever. For health reasons, as well as environmental and animal cruelty reasons, I became plant-based overnight.

Eating a whole-food plant-based diet requires some additional knowledge of nutritional values and alternative ingredients. While the pandemic was raging, I started an online course on how to prepare healthy and delicious plant-based food at Rouxbe – the world’s leading online culinary school. I have always enjoyed cooking for friends and family and loved experimenting with new dishes, but through this course, I learned multiple new techniques and ingredients. Combined with the fact that Singapore did not have ‘fine-dining’ plant-based restaurants, the idea was born to run a private kitchen serving creative, delicious, and healthy plant-based food – and to raise awareness of the benefits of eating plant-based food.

But then, how can you be credible if you have hardly seen the inside of a professional kitchen? In the distant past, I worked with a chef on the design of a kitchen in a private art museum, but that did not help my professional cooking qualifications. I am a true believer in in-person experiences, so I decided to go back to school and applied to be admitted to the 3-months professional plant-based culinary arts diploma course at Le Cordon Bleu in London. When the travel bans started to be lifted, off I was to London to learn more culinary techniques and concepts, skills and product knowledge required to run a professional plant-based food kitchen.

Following three months of fun – and intense learning – over the summer of 2022, I was convinced that I wanted to put my plan into practice and establish a plant-based private kitchen. Most vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Singapore offered plant-based but still unhealthy highly processed and/or deep-fried food. Some fine-dining restaurants served vegan food upon request and increasingly restaurants offered a combination of vegetarian and plant-based food. However, the number of fine-dining 100% plant-based whole-food restaurants was very limited to non-existent. While the demand for and popularity of sustainable plant-based food dining options is on the rise globally, I felt there was a big gap in Singapore, and hence Delice Asan was born.

My vision was to:
– Enrich fine dining plant-based food options in Singapore and provide healthy, nutritious, creative, and inspiring food in a fine dining style and environment
– Create an appreciation of how flavoursome, dynamic and sublime plant-based food can be
– Not replicate textures or flavours of meat, but instead let vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, grains, and pulses be the centrepieces
– Use locally produced ingredients where available and aim for low / zero waste. Food waste is the number one contributor to greenhouse gas emissions globally and places like Singapore have a high level of food waste
– Teach people how to prepare plant-based food and make more sustainable food choices.

Anne, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

After a long and successful international career as a lawyer and strategy consultant, including at two of the Big4, I decided to completely change my focus and profession and to start a whole-food plant-based private kitchen.

I did not grow up in a culinary family, nor did I have a culinary background. I just enjoyed cooking for friends and family so I felt compelled to go back to school first before starting Delice Asan Botanical Gastronomy (www.deliceasan.com). Delice Asan is all about creating incredibly healthy and delicious plant-based food. I innovatively use plant-based whole foods to prepare unforgettable dishes that please the palate while reducing our carbon footprint. Delice Asan’s botanical gastronomy dishes burst with creativity, colour, flavour, and nutrients.

Around the world, supermarket shelves are now filled with vegan products designed to offer consumers direct replacements for meat, fish, and cheese but many of these products are highly processed, unnatural, unhealthy, and full of chemicals. My dishes are completely free of animals, animal products and highly processed food. I cook with plants, favouring the honest and natural power of the freshest and finest ingredients, and where possible, the ones I can find close to home to support local businesses. I experiment and have fun creating healthy, delicious, and high-quality meals which are friendly to your body and the environment. It will help you eat healthier while reducing your overall carbon footprint.

I love it when guests – either in the private kitchen or at events that we cater – discover how delicious, creative, and beautiful healthy plant-based food can be. When they have this wow experience! Most of our Delice Asan guests are not vegan or even vegetarian. If at all, sometimes one guest is into plant-based food and is bringing a group of friends or family along – and these are often the sceptics. No meat, no fish? They anticipate it will be completely tasteless, boring, green stuff. I just love it when these sceptics are amazed by what they eat. “How can chocolate mousse be so creamy without milk and cream? How do you do that? Please teach me!” 

There is a rich scene of restaurants in Singapore but if you ask vegans about the available options, you will hear that their choices are limited. Many vegan restaurants use artificial meat and fish and/or prepare food in a very unhealthy way. With Delice Asan, they know that their meal will be completely free of animals, animal products and highly processed food. They do not have to second guess if it is okay for them to eat or not. They know we serve healthy, delicious, and high-quality meals.

I find you can be more creative with plant-based food than having to meet the expectations of how a dish or sauce should taste. You can create more out-of-the-box dishes and have fun. And it can be fine dining. It does not have to be a salad, hummus, or falafel. There is an endless range of dishes and flavours.

Also, the setting of Delice Asan is a perfect environment for a private dining experience. Guests feel they are in a restaurant yet can have private conversations; they can bring their wines if they wish. Situated in a private bungalow in a quiet neighbourhood, Delice Asan is a great destination for food lovers. Set among private gardens, and a variety of beautiful elegantly decorated dining areas to choose from, it creates the perfect ambience for diners to enjoy the botanical gastronomic experience to the fullest.
The house is beautifully furnished and full of art and artefacts from various parts of the world, and photographs – which is one of my other hobbies.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When I was still in my corporate life, we used the following example about business opportunities. There is this beautiful island in the Pacific and its inhabitants are all barefoot. Nobody is wearing shoes. One vision is that because nobody is wearing shoes, they will never buy shoes. The other vision is that because nobody is wearing shoes, you can create a demand for shoes while there are no competitors in the market. You can use a similar comparison for a plant-based whole-food private kitchen in Singapore, a city famous for its crab, fish, chicken, and meat. How often people have not told me “Singaporeans do not eat plant-based food and that they will never like it!” I believed though that there was an opportunity, established Delice Asan, and embarked on a journey to introduce plant-based food that is so delicious that people will start coming back for more.

It takes time! We are one year in and I have created multiple avenues to introduce our dishes. Delice Asan has created three complementary services: EAT – LEARN – TRANSFORM

Eat – serve scrumptious food at Delice Asan’s private kitchen, at private events, or in the privacy of someone’s home, through an in-home chef service

Learn – teach how to prepare plant-based food in individual or small-sized cooking classes and how to make the next best lifestyle and food choices through nutrient education

Transform – through tailored advisory services, help companies to make more sustainable food consumption practices

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

This comment from one of my repeat customers sums it up: “When the product is great and the provider is easy to work with … it is a no-brainer for me.” Providing top-notch and consistent quality, being communicative and transparent, and applying a key principle that I have learned throughout my career. “Make the moment matter”.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.deliceasan.com
• Instagram: delice_asan
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/anne-schot