What Makes an Authentic Izakaya (and How Habibi-san Reinvents It)

“Authentic izakaya” is one of the most-used phrases in Singapore’s Japanese dining scene and one of the least examined. It usually gets deployed to mean dark wood, red lanterns, a menu in Japanese, and staff who shout a greeting when you walk in. Those are set dressing. They are not what makes an izakaya an izakaya.

We have a stake in this argument, so we will be upfront: we run a Japanese-Middle Eastern izakaya, and by the lantern definition we would fail. By the definition we think is actually correct, we are squarely inside it. Here is the case.

An izakaya is a format, not a cuisine

The single most useful thing to understand is that izakaya describes a way of eating and drinking, not a list of dishes. The word breaks down to a sake shop with a place to sit — drink first, food built around the drinking, no course structure imposed on the table.

That has four practical consequences, and they are the real test of authenticity:

• Drink-led ordering. The first thing that arrives is a drink, and the food is chosen to go with it rather than the other way round.
• Small plates, arriving as they are ready. No appetiser-main-dessert march. Dishes land when the kitchen finishes them.
• Sharing by default. Nothing on the table belongs to one person.
• A pace you set yourself. You order in rounds across an evening, not once at the start.

Judge a room on those four and the lanterns stop mattering. We walk through how this plays out in practice — including etiquette and how to read a menu — in our first-timer’s guide to izakaya in Singapore, so we will not repeat it here.

What the format was actually built for

Izakaya culture grew out of ordinary drinking places serving working people who wanted food with their sake — not a refined culinary tradition handed down intact. It was always adaptive. Menus absorbed whatever was cheap, good and local, which is how deep-fried things, Chinese-influenced dishes and Western-influenced dishes all ended up on izakaya menus in Japan without anybody calling it fusion.

This matters for the authenticity question. A format whose defining historical behaviour is absorbing outside influences cannot coherently be policed for purity. The izakaya that refuses to change is arguably the less authentic one.

Where we deliberately depart

None of which is a licence to do anything and call it izakaya. Our departures are specific, and we would rather name them than let them sit as vague “fusion”.

The pantry is Middle Eastern. Our mezze section is hummus, babaganoush, labne, matbucha, wood-smoked olives — a Levantine spread, not a Japanese one. What makes it work as izakaya food is that mezze and otsumami are structurally the same idea: small, salty, built to be eaten slowly over a drink. Two cultures arrived at the same solution.

The technique is Japanese. The seasoning logic underneath those dips is not. Our babaganoush is smoked eggplant with kinnogomadare, a golden sesame sauce, plus tempura crisp and togarashi. Matbucha — a Moroccan cooked tomato and pepper dish — gets kombu dashi and nori. Hummus arrives under ikura. Lamb tartare is dressed with shio kombu and a wasabi ponzu vinaigrette.

The fire is the constant. Charcoal is where the two traditions genuinely meet rather than merely sit next to each other. A yakitori grill and a Levantine mangal are the same instrument with different names. Our Lebanese charcoal chicken takes forty-five minutes over the coals and comes with a garlic-yuzu toum — a Lebanese emulsion, a Japanese citrus. Pita goes over the same fire.

We serve pork and alcohol. Middle Eastern theming invites the question, so the honest answer up front: Habibi-san is not halal. There is a Mangalica pork collar chop on the menu and a full bar.

Why the name, and where we came from

“Habibi” is Arabic for darling. “-san” is the Japanese honorific. The name is the concept, and it was chosen before the menu was finished.

We opened in December 2020 at 55 Haji Lane, founded by Jonathan Lee and Nadine Tay, who had both worked at Artichoke. In October 2025 the flagship moved to 29 Hamilton Road in Jalan Besar, which is where the charcoal grill you have seen in our photographs actually lives. The original Haji Lane site did not close — it became Li’l Habibi, our kushiyaki offshoot.

The one award we ever cite is Nadine Tay’s Rising Female Chef of the Year in 2022. We mention it here only because “authentic” arguments tend to become credential arguments, and we would rather state our actual credential than imply a larger one. There is more on all of this on our about page.

Fun dining, not fine dining

The phrase we use for ourselves, and the one that best explains the departures above, is fun dining rather than fine dining. Our own drinks menu puts it as “serious food, never a serious mood” — which is, if you think about it, a fairly exact description of what an izakaya has always been. Serious cooking in a room where nobody is being serious at you.

That is the part of the tradition we are most careful with. You can change the pantry and keep the format. Change the format — impose courses, quiet the room, make the table formal — and you have lost the thing, however Japanese the ingredients are.

So: is it authentic?

By the lantern test, no. By the format test — drink-led, small plates, shared, self-paced, cooked over fire, loud — yes, and more consistently than some rooms that look the part.

You are welcome to disagree at the table, which is the correct venue for this argument. If you want to see how other Singapore izakayas answer the same question, our shortlist of the best izakaya in Singapore covers nine of them honestly, and the late-night guide tells you which are still cooking after 10pm.

Ours is at 29 Hamilton Road, Tuesday to Sunday. The menu is here and bookings are on Chope.

The name is part of the same argument, as it happens: an Arabic term of endearment with a Japanese honorific attached to it. We unpacked it in what “Habibi-san” actually means.