SINGAPORE – Two family-run heritage food brands are navigating succession in a changing food and beverage scene.
At Wisma Atria’s Food Republic foodcourt, Nya Nya – which opened on Jan 1 – covers three generations, from founder Lilian Tan, 79, who started cafe Nonya Delicatessen in Bukit Timah back in 1980, to her son Damian Lim and his wife Lynne Chong, both 56, and their children.
LiXin Teochew Fishball Noodles, which began as a pushcart in Kempas Road in 1968 under founder Lim Lee Seng, 79, has grown to 19 outlets and is managed by his son Eddie Lim, 55.
For both businesses, the ongoing challenge is to modernise operations while protecting recipes built on decades of hard work.
Nya Nya’s origins stem from Nonya Delicatessen. Madam Tan had started with a home-based business preparing tiffin lunches for students and office workers. She recalls waking in the wee hours to cook with the help of three small rice cookers. Her children peeled 120 eggs each day, shelled prawns and cleaned up before school. Her husband delivered the lunches in a Mitsubishi station wagon.
When a shop unit at Bukit Timah Plaza was offered at a rent of $1,500 a month, Madam Tan and her younger sister took up the space and moved operations there, churning a profit within the first month. Recipes came from her Melaka-rooted Peranakan heritage.
The brand name Nya Nya, chosen by her grandson Daryl Lim, 26, refers to mother in Peranakan. It is a brand extension of Nonya Delicatessen, aimed at a wider base of diners while retaining the essence of its predecessor.
In the early days of LiXin Teochew Fishball Noodles, Mr Lim Lee Seng and his wife worked a punishing routine.
Mr Eddie Lim recalls his father going to Jurong Fishery Port at 3pm, after the stall served its last customer for the day, to buy fish. From 5pm, Mr Eddie Lim, along with his parents and grandmother, spent the evening scraping meat from the fish skin with metal spoons.
After dinner, his father went to bed by 9pm and woke at 2am to head to the stall, where he would make fishballs and fry sambal chilli and pork lard, all on his own.
“He was so strict about quality, he didn’t allow anyone to handle the main food preparation and cooking,” Mr Eddie Lim says. “He cooked everything by look and feel.”
The family moved the business to the Kempas Road hawker centre in the 1970s, then to Kim Keat Palm Market & Food Centre in Toa Payoh in 1990, where the elder Mr Lim still helms the stall with two helpers.
Nya Nya’s Mr Damian Lim grew up learning about Peranakan food as his mother cooked it daily for their family meals. He started helping out at her eatery during his secondary school days. He became a flight attendant for three years, but quit to join Madam Tan, eventually taking over Nonya Delicatessen in 1997 when she retired.
He introduced the first operational change by cutting the number of items on the menu so she could scale back on labour-intensive dishes such as popiah, which involved cutting vegetables by hand.
He continued running the shop while raising his children, literally in the kitchen. He has four sons – aged 20, 22, 26 and 28 – and a daughter, 14.
Chores for the children included cleaning the floor and washing dishes. As they grew older, they learnt to cut fishcake and tofu, peel eggs and shell prawns. Later, they learnt to handle noodles and master timing and temperature. The children followed their parents to the shop from a young age, with roles assigned gradually as they showed more interest.
At LiXin, the handover took longer.
Mr Eddie Lim helped out from age nine, washing dishes and serving customers, but the experience pushed him away. “Since a young age, I told myself I would never want to be a hawker. I hated everything about it, from the long hours to the smell of fish lingering on my clothes.”
He remembers smelling of yellowtail daily and taxi drivers asking if his mother was a fishmonger.
He returned only in 2006, after 12 years in the car trade. At 36, he decided it was time to try running a business.
