The transplantation of a culinary capital
The offerings of one of the world’s most famous gastronomy hubs, Singapore, is quickly becoming commonplace in China, with Shanghai being the epicenter of this rave
From sweet and spicy chilli crabs to hearty laksa and Hainanese chicken rice, dishes from the wellknown gastronomy capital of Singapore have been an increasingly common sight in Shanghai.
Five years ago, just than a handful of Singaporean restaurants existed in the Chinese megacity. Today, diners are spoilt for choice, with dozens of establishments offering dishes from the Southeast Asian country.
Among those offering Singapore food are the restaurants under Paradise Group, which has been steadily expanding its footprint in China. Since 2012, the group has opened 24 restaurants in the country, 18 of which are located in Shanghai.
Fans of Singapore food can find Hainanese chicken rice at Paradise Group’s Ding Xing outlets across the city, while those seeking to indulge in a more refined, Singapore-style Cantonese feast can head to its Taste Paradise establishments.
According to Paradise Group Chief Operating Officer Edlan Chua, the group’s revenue in China grew from 15 million yuan ($2.1 million) in 2012 to 200 million yuan last year.
“China is our most important market…it accounts for about 15 percent of the group’s overall revenue,” said Chua.
“We are aiming to open three to four new outlets in China every year. The Chinese market will be the focus of our expansion, but the Singapore market will remain as our international headquarters.”
Another major Singapore company that has ventured into Shanghai is Jumbo Group. Following its debut in Shanghai in 2013, the group went on to open another two Jumbo outlets in the city and another three in Beijing, Xi’an and Fuzhou.
“Shanghai, being the most populous urban area in China, provides an attractive huge target market. With its status as a global center for finance and established links with Singapore, in terms of both business and leisure, the buzz and prosperity of the city makes it an ideal choice for us,” said Ang Kiam Meng, Group Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Jumbo Group.
Sales from Jumbo’s China outlets have been growing, with Ang noting that it accounted for 18 percent of the group’s total revenue in the 2019 financial year, up from around 10 percent in 2015.
In December 2019, the group further expanded its footprint in China by introducing two new dining concepts — Ng Ah Sio Bak Kut Teh and Xinyao Hainanese Chicken Rice — at the newly opened ITC Mall in Shanghai.
Another notable restaurant group that made its foray into Shanghai is Putien. The restaurant chain, which boasts having a Michelin star for its Kitchener Road outlet in Singapore, currently has seven branches in Shanghai. Renowned pork ribs soup restaurant Song Fa Bak Kut has also been steadily expanding its presence, with five outlets in prime locations.
Self-taught chefs make waves
But it’s not just restaurant chains that are bringing a slice of Singaporean cuisine to China. In the past five years, self-taught Singaporean chefs have also been making waves with their comprehensive offerings of dishes from home, some of which are lesser known to the international community.
Among them is Mok Siew Lin, a former mergers and acquisitions lawyer who in 2015 pursued cooking as a second career. Called Eden’s Kitchen, Mok’s eatery first started out as a catering business before evolving into a delivery service that sells dishes such as Hainanese chicken rice, bak chor mee (minced pork noodles) and lor mee (yellow noodles in a savory brown gravy made with spices and starch).
Her best-selling dish, however, is the kway zhup, a meal comprising flat rice noodles in a dark broth served with a platter that contains pork belly, different types of tofu, hard boiled eggs, bean curd skin and pig intestines. So impressive is her kway zhup that some of her clients have even claimed that her version is better than those sold by hawkers in Singapore.
Mok’s dedication to authenticity is also reflected in the lengths she goes to when preparing the respective chilli sauces for her dishes.
Because these sauces vary in term of taste and texture — for instance, chicken rice chilli is vastly different from kway zhup chilli — and are not readily available, she spends hours just to create these peripheral yet indispensable elements of Singaporean dishes.
“One essential ingredient in some of these chilli sauces is hae bee, or dried shrimp. The version that we buy in China isn’t quite ready-to-use we still have to spend time to comb through the mixture to remove stones, tiny pincers and other sediments,” she said.
“On average, it takes about two of my workers 10 hours just to make 10 kilograms of chilli sauce. It’s very time consuming!”
This self-taught chef’s authentic creations have not gone unnoticed. Mok currently has not one or two, but four WeChat groups filled with close to 1,700 customers.
Another self-taught Singaporean chef who shares the same attention to detail as Mok is Joey Cheong, the owner of Umaami Global Kitchen in Shanghai’s Jing’an district. Cheong once spent an hour observing a hawker in Singapore cook Hokkien — noodles fried in a prawn broth and topped with prawns and squid. He even used his mobile phone to time how long each of the different elements in the dish spent in the wok.
Another crowd favorite is Umaami’s kambing soup, a thick and spicy lamb soup that originated from Singapore’s Indian Muslim community. Cheong said that this hearty soup is also popular with many locals who enjoy flavors from China’s northwest region such as Xinjiang.
Like Eden’s Kitchen, many of the ingredients for Umaami’s Singaporean dishes are made from scratch. According to Cheong, even the black soy sauce that is served with his Hainanese chicken rice is made from a custom blend of ingredients.
“The dark soy sauce that we eat with chicken rice in Singapore is thick and sweet, and this version is difficult to obtain in China because it is very specific to Teochew culture. So, in order to make this, I caramelise the best rock sugar I can find and blend it with the best soy sauce I can get my hands on,” he said.
“I think there’s a lot of pride in making things from scratch because then there’s a story to tell.”
A former advertising professional who decided to turn his passion for cooking into a career about five years ago, Cheong is also known as the only person in the city to have offered a Singaporean buffet brunch every Sunday.
Following a suspension of the buffet — it ran for 18 months — due to the COVID-19 epidemic, Cheong will debut a new Sunday special this month which he dubbed as “tze char
omakase”. Tze char is a Hokkien term which literally means “cooked food”. The term is often used to describe small food stalls that are more casual and affordable than regular restaurants. Omakase is a Japanese term which refers to a meal where the dishes are decided by the chef.
“The tze char omakase is a natural evolution of Umaami’s Singapore Heartland Brunch Buffet. Having a
tze char meal together with family and friends is one of the quintessential Singapore dining experiences, and we want to share this with the local diners,” he said.
“We have decided to do this
omakase style as it gives diners the opportunity to try different dishes. People usually order within their comfort zones and this sometimes causes them to miss out on a lot of goodies. Here at Umaami, we believe that food can be a way to explore a new culture.”
I think there’s a lot of pride in making things from scratch because then there’s a story to tell.”
Joey Cheong, owner of Umaami Global Kitchen in Shanghai