Famed Empress Place Beef Kway Teow Hawker Now HK Dessert Chef In Chinatown
He closed his 26-year-old hawker stall last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Last March, David Lim made the difficult decision to close his well-loved Empress Place Teochew Beef Kway Teow stall. The veteran hawker, 64, had been plying his trade at Siglap for almost 25 years. Due to a rent hike, he shifted to Maxwell Food Centre in 2019 and roped in his daughter Melissa Lim, 37, a former science teacher, to help out. Selling beef kway teow runs in the family; the duo are related to the owners of the famed Original Hock Lam Street Beef Kway Teow chain.
But the stall struggled with attracting customers to its obscure spot in the hawker centre, and David found himself taking home just a few hundred dollars a month in income. When the Covid-19 circuit breaker loomed, he was forced to call it a day.
After the closure of his own stall, David went to help his son John Paul Lim, 26, who runs his own beef kway teow stall Gubak Kia at the Timbre+ hawker centre. Sadly, the business, too, fell victim to the pandemic and shuttered in March this year. John Paul is now selling his dad’s famous beef kway teow from a pop-up at Amoy Street bar Moonstone.
It would be natural to expect David to set up another hawker business, but the man made a surprising career move. In April this year, he started work as the head chef at new Chinatown dine-in dessert shop Oriental Desserts, which sells Hong Kong-style tang shui.
“The economy is so uncertain, it wouldn’t make sense to open another stall,” he tells 8days.sg. He candidly shares: “I had nothing to do, so I submitted my resume and went for an interview here and got the job. It’s good to learn new things besides cooking beef kway teow.”
David breezily remarks that he had little trouble switching from cooking savoury kway teow to making Chinese desserts. “This is my first time making tang shui; it’s quite interesting to learn lah,” he quips. His hawker background also comes in useful for him in picking up the ropes. “I used to take two hours to prepare food but it’s just one hour here. I know where to move and where to start,” he says.
The Temple Street shophouse joint is just a few doors down from the perpetually crowded tang shui shop Mei Heong Yuen. The spacious, chinoiserie-themed eatery with a very chilly air-con temperature can seat around 34 customers once dine-in resumes.
The Oriental Dessert shop helmed by David is the second outlet for the brand, which has a flagship takeaway kiosk in Bukit Batok East with its own stone grinder for making sesame paste and tau huay (silken beancurd). Both outlets are owned by former Cathay Pacific flight attendant Erin Lee (pictured), 53, who got the idea to open a traditional tang shui business after being stationed for two years in Hong Kong.
She passed her mother’s “home-style Cantonese dessert recipes” to David, who makes them in-house. But the sesame paste and tau huay used are made at the Bukit Batok outlet and transported to Chinatown.
The mainstays of Hong Kong-style desserts are all here, such as Traditional Beancurd ($3.50) with palm sugar, Black Sesame Paste ($4.50) and Steam Egg Fresh Milk with Red Bean ($5). There are also fancier options like Peach Gum in Longan Red Dates ($6), Peach Gum in Almond Tea ($7) and Peach Gum Steam Milk in Whole Coconut ($15).
David makes this classic Hong Kong dessert; we enjoy the soft, wobbly, steaming hot egg custard topped with soft red beans that still have a bit of bite to them. Despite the hot weather, this takeaway-friendly dessert is also good for slurping up in Oriental Desserts’ cooling space.
Order the velvety beancurd here, which comes with a spoonful of orange palm sugar that adds a mild, perky sweetness to the smooth, delicate beancurd. Nice.
The house-made sesame paste is not our favourite pick here. It lacks the fragrant earthiness of roasted black sesame seeds, and could do with a bit more sugar.
Peach gum, popular for its collagen content with supposedly beautifying properties, is liberally added to a few desserts here. Like this comforting milk option, which is served warm and laden with plump red dates and peach gum cooked down to a gelatinous jelly-like consistency.
This decadent dessert is a whole lot pricier than the rest of the menu items, with silky steamed milk custard cooked with fresh coconut juice and peach gum. You can have it chilled or warm, but we prefer the refreshing chilled version, which highlights the clean, pure flavour of the coconut juice.
Address: 59 Temple St, S058604.
Tel: 8100-5353 (WhatsApp for islandwide delivery)
Opening hours: Open daily except Tues. Mon, Wed, Thu & Sun 12pm-10pm. Fri & Sat 12pm-11pm.
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Photos: Kelvin Chia
