Louisa Lim Went to Paris Without Knowing How to Bake a Cake

Louisa Lim flew to Paris in 2016 without knowing how to bake a cake. She was studying sociology at Singapore Management University, and what she wanted was the fondant on a wedding cake, that smooth coat of sugar. She signed up for Le Cordon Bleu anyway. Classmates were surprised. She later told Asia’s 50 Best the decorating had been for herself, until a working kitchen changed her mind. “I just dove in, headfirst.”

She started as a stagiaire for Mathieu Pacaud, a trainee in his kitchens. Histoires, his restaurant in Paris’s 16th arrondissement, had two Michelin stars. Hexagone was the more casual room next door. At Apicius she worked on a new dessert menu under Jérôme Chaucesse and Marc Lecomte. Chaucesse had won Meilleur Ouvrier de France for pastry in 2015, France’s highest craft title. Lecomte was the executive pastry chef. She also spent a stage in Japan.

In 2019 she came home to Odette, Julien Royer’s French restaurant in the National Gallery Singapore. He opened it in 2015 and named it for his grandmother. That year the Michelin Guide gave the room its third star, and Asia’s 50 Best ranked it No. 1 in Asia, a rank it held again in 2020. Lim’s course was the last one. She has said that is what a guest remembers. A Shizuoka strawberry pavlova came with pistachio and a few drops of olive oil. A mille-feuille took on sobacha, tea made from roasted buckwheat. Roasting and steaming, usually the savory kitchen’s work, showed up in her pastry.

On March 28, 2023, Asia’s 50 Best named her Asia’s Best Pastry Chef. The ceremony was in Singapore, and Valrhona, a French chocolate maker, sponsored the prize. She told Asia’s 50 Best she was grateful, and that she still had a long way to go. She also said she wanted the job to make room for other women in pastry. In 2024 Tatler Asia named her its best pastry chef. She left Odette in March 2026. Those seven years, she told CNA, taught her how exact the pastry had to be, and how to look after a guest for a whole evening.

Loulouca opened on July 29, 2026, at 6 Ann Siang Hill. She was 34. Her business partner, Candice Teo, comes from music. A split-flap board over the takeaway counter turns when the song changes. Three egrets are the mark on the door.

By day the counter sells entremets, ice cream, coffee, and matcha. One cake crosses a Paris-Brest, a ring of choux, with a Mont Blanc, the chestnut dessert piled like a small mountain. Her version is matcha, pistachio, and kaya she makes from fresh pandan leaves. A chocolate cake remembers the Coco Exotic from Four Leaves, the bakery slice from her childhood birthdays, made lighter than the one she grew up with. At night the tables are plated desserts, with wine or tea. The sobacha from Odette returns as a tiramisu.

She told CNA a room of only sweets might sound daring. Pastry, she said, is the only thing she knows how to do.

If you want a savory dinner, eat it somewhere else on that hill, then come in for the sweets. In the afternoon, the cake is the visit. The plates from opening week are in the news story.