Category Food Stories

December 2020: a Middle Eastern izakaya opens in a Haji Lane shophouse, five nights a week, sharing a roof with a cocktail bar. Five years later we are cooking over charcoal on Hamilton Road. Here is the timeline with the dates attached — and an honest account of which dishes made it through and which quietly did not.

Habibi is Arabic for my beloved. -San is the Japanese honorific that also gets attached to shops and trades. Why we put them together, and how to say it.

We opened at 55 Haji Lane in December 2020 and moved to 29 Hamilton Road in October 2025. Why we moved, what stayed behind as Li Habibi, and what changed on the menu.