Food Consultant, Cookbook Author & Founder-Owner, Shermay’s Singapore Fine Food

Shermay Lee is a food consultant and cookbook author specialising in Singapore heritage and Peranakan cuisine. Her most recent endeavor and role is as founder and owner of her eponymous brand, Shermay's Singapore Fine Food, featuring her sauces, marinade, crackers, and curry powder.

As part of her food consultancy work, she worked with The Clifford Pier at The Fullerton Bay Hotel from 2014-2015. In 2014, she conceptualised a special Peranakan menu based on her grandmother's published and unpublished recipes for The Clifford Pier's launch, the August menu, as well as the permanent Afternoon Tea menu. For SG50, Singapore's golden jubilee year, she curated a special menu 'Singapore's Culinary Grande Dames' featuring dishes by Mrs Lee Chin Koon (her grandmother), Mrs Leong Yee Soo (her grandaunt), and Mrs Ellice Handy (her former school principal); all of whom were pioneer Singaporean cookbook authors. She has also collaborated with Conrad Hotel, Sheraton Towers, Tanglin Club, and The Line at Shangri-La.

Singapore Airlines (SQ) has also tapped into Shermay's culinary expertise to commemorate Singapore's 50th birthday with the creation of a three-month-long 'Singapore Heritage Cuisine' menu, available across all cabin classes and SQ lounges. This appointment makes her the first-born and bred Singaporean, first Peranakan, and one of a handful of female chefs to collaborate with SQ on an international scale. In 2020, Shermay returned to headline and curate the menu for Restaurant A380 @ Changi, the world's first dining experience onboard an airplane amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Its slots were completely sold out upon launch.

After more than 11 years of operating, owning, and teaching at the renowned Shermay's Cooking School, she closed the school and its shop in 2015 to focus on her food consulting and her brand of sauces - Shermay's Singapore Fine Food. The brand owns and distributes its own range of four sauces (Cilicuka, a Peranakan chili sauce based on her grandmother's recipe) and dry spice mix, Nonya Curry Powder. It has also steadily grown its product catalog with an exquisite selection of premium crackers. The brand supplies its selection of products to various retail outlets including Huber's Butchery, The American Club, Shangri-La Hotel, Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Tangs department store, and KrisShop in-flight magazine.

Shermay is also an award-winning cookbook author, having won two awards internationally. Shermay's inaugural cookbook 'The New Mrs Lee's Cookbook Vol. 1: Nonya Cuisine' was launched in Oct 2003 and garnered 2 accolades at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2003. The cookbook was first awarded the 'Best Cookbook Award - Special Awards Category (English)' then proceeded to the finals and won a 'Special Award of the Jury in Respect of Tradition'. Her second cookbook, 'The New Mrs Lee's Cookbook Vol. 2: Straits Heritage Cuisine', was launched in Oct 2004. Both cookbooks were on the Borders and Kinokuniya Top 10 Best-Selling List. Shermay's cookbooks received positive reviews in The Straits Times, The Sunday Times, The Business Times, EasyStreats, Wine & Dine, Cuisine & Wine, ELLE, Prestige, and Tatler in Singapore as well as in newspapers and magazines in Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand.

Notably, one of the highlights of her 15 years in the industry was her role at the 'Worlds of Flavour International Conference' in 2004. She was part of the team sent as Singapore's culinary ambassadors to the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley, California, to participate in the conference where she gave talks and demonstrations on Singaporean cuisine.

No stranger to the media, she has been featured on the cover of The Straits Times' Life! segment in November 2014, as well as in other printed media such as VOGUE, The Business Times, Channel News Asia, Lianhe Zaobao, 8 Days, TODAY, i-Weekly, Epicure, Lifestyle Asia, SilverKris, Honeycombers, OpenRice, etc. She has also appeared on radio programs including Monocle, Gold 90.5 FM, and Capital 95.8 FM. For many consecutive years, she has been listed in Singapore Tatler's prestigious 'Top 300 List'. Internationally, Shermay was asked by Chef Ming Tsai, the host of KPBS's Emmy-nominated US TV series 'Simply Ming', to be a guest chef on the program and showcase her Peranakan cooking.

She has also been invited to judge various cooking competitions such as 'The Perfect Meal', which aired on Channel News Asia and was sponsored by Miele, as well as MediaCorp's Channel 5 reality TV show, 'Wok Stars'. For the past few years, she has been a judge for the 'World Gourmet Summit (WGS) Awards of Excellence', which recognizes the top talent in Singapore and the region.

As a 6th generation Peranakan with a strong culinary tradition, Shermay has had strong impressions of being in the kitchen as early as five years old, guided by her grandmother, Mrs. Lee Chin Koon, who was considered the doyen of Peranakan cuisine and the author of the famous cookbook 'Mrs. Lee's Cookbook', a kitchen stalwart published three decades ago. She later attended the renowned classical French culinary institute, Le Cordon Bleu, and then worked as an Investment Banker at Morgan Stanley, Schroders Corporate Finance, and UBS Investment Bank. Prior to that, she graduated from Brown University, USA, with a degree in Political Science and History.


Read more: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shermay-lee