Heritage food with a modern touch: How two food families in Singapore are drawing new customers

SINGAPORE – Hainanese curry rice and steamed bao may not come to mind when looking for Instagrammable food to post, but these heritage eats are holding their own in the age of social media, food fads and fickle diners.

That is no mean feat, considering the heritage brands that have gone under.

In 2025, 86-year-old Ka-Soh,

. Warong Nasi Pariaman in Kampong Gelam, with 78 years of history, is

to explore its options, after

.

In a challenging environment, where operators used to the perennial high costs of running a food business are also contending with diners who prefer to spend their strong Singapore dollars abroad, two heritage food businesses are bullish about the future.

Tanjong Rhu Pau, established in 1988 and now run by the founder’s children, is unveiling a new logo, opening two new kiosks and starting bao deliveries. Loo’s Hainanese Curry Rice, which marks 80 years in business in 2026, has Ms Dawn Loo, 30, stepping in to carry on the business her grandfather started and which her father now runs.

Here is how they are making sure their family businesses continue to thrive.

Where: 02-67/68 Tiong Bahru Market & Food Centre; open: 8.30am to 2.45pm (Fridays to Wednesdays), closed on Thursdays
Info: @looscurryrice on Instagram

Pork chop, check. Meatball, check. Curry chicken, check. Braised cabbage, check. Ms Dawn Loo, 30, has mastered these dishes that her family’s Loo’s Hainanese Curry Rice is famous for.

By year-end, she wants to master the rest: braised pork belly, sambal prawns, sambal sotong and assam fish. Her father Loo Kia Chee, 66, who inherited the business from his father, the late Loo Niap Tan, thinks her braised pork belly is not quite salty enough. The only child has her work cut out for her.

Still, this is rapid progress, seeing as how she joined the business only in August 2025, after years of vowing never to do it.

But her father had surgery to repair torn cartilage in his right knee in June that year, and was looking at six months to a year of recovery time. She stepped up to the plate.

Ms Loo, who has a degree in social work from the National University of Singapore (NUS), says: “I was seeing in the news that a lot of heritage businesses were closing down. We are already 80 years old. If I didn’t join, then maybe three to five years down the road, we might also close down. And I felt it would be a waste.”

At the time, she was a teaching assistant at NUS, drawing a four-figure monthly salary. She had received an offer for a civil service job that would pay her a few hundred dollars more, but turned it down and joined Loo’s.

She took a pay cut, and works long hours six days a week at Tiong Bahru food centre, where Loo’s takes up two stalls.

And with that, the family’s legacy continues for a third generation.

Ms Loo’s grandfather came to Singapore from Hainan, China, in the 1930s. He started a Hainanese zi char stall at Happy World in Geylang with his brother and brother-in-law. It was a hit right through World War II.

They moved to a Tanjong Pagar coffee shop in 1946, and the foundation for Loo’s was built there. This is when they started selling Hainanese pork chop, chicken curry and the other signatures.

Mr Loo says: “The Hainanese came to Singapore late, and worked as cooks and sailors and in coffee shops. The pork chop they learnt from working for the British, and the curry from working as chefs for Peranakan families.”

His dad’s brother-in-law had learnt some of the recipes while working as a chef for a Peranakan family. His dad learnt to make sambal prawns and assam fish from another Peranakan family.

Starting from when he was five, Mr Loo would wash dishes with his mother at the stall, and go round the market with his father. When he was eight, he started going to the market alone, riding a trishaw, to pick up meat, seafood and other ingredients his father had ordered.

Mr Loo still does things the way his father did. The spice mix for the pork chop, with more than 10 ingredients, comes from a Chinese medical shop that ground it for his father. He uses the same soya sauce supplier. The biscuit crumbs for the pork chop are from Khong Guan, the brand his father favoured. He uses ang kar sea prawns for the sambal, just like his father did, and fresh, not frozen, chicken for the curry.

Ms Loo says: “We even boil the eggs and peel them for our braised eggs, even though you can now buy them ready boiled and peeled.”

What is different is how much the food costs. In 1946, a plate of rice, pork chop and cabbage would have been 30 cents. In 1979, when Mr Loo took over the business, it was $1.80. Now, it is about $4.

Overheads, Mr Loo adds, are different too. His father paid $90 a month in rent. When he took over the business, it was $450 a month. Now, at the food centre, it is $3,000 a month for the two stalls. Since 1990, Loo’s has been in Tiong Bahru, first in coffee shops and then moving to the food centre four years ago.

Pork chop and braised pork are priced from $2 each. The meatballs, which sell out two hours after the stall opens, are $2 each. Sambal sotong is priced from $3 and the cabbage is priced from $1.20.

There is a perpetual long queue at the stall from when it opens at 8.30am, with customers that span the ages. The stall attracts young office workers, and doctors and nurses from nearby Singapore General Hospital too.

Ms Loo says: “I realised that younger customers are willing to spend, on average $5 to $6 a plate. Groups of two to six would order dishes to share.”

Since joining the business, Ms Loo has been working through all the stations: taking orders and assembling plates of curry rice, working the cash register, working as a kitchen assistant prepping ingredients, and cooking.

She plans to spend more time on the last two stations and wants to codify the recipes, which the three cooks, including her father, execute via muscle memory.

She will also be applying for a government grant for a machine that chops vegetables.

Loo’s is also now on social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Lemon8 and Xiaohongshu – and also posts content on YouTube. There are videos of her making the signature meatballs, the cooks at work in the kitchen and the queue.

Once she has figured out the business inside and out, she will look at expansion. She might open the Tiong Bahru stall at night, open stalls in other hawker centres, or sell Loo’s signature offerings and sauces in ready-to-eat form.

Mr Loo says of his daughter: “She is smarter than I am. She knows how to modernise the business and find ways to do things better. She is thinking of what will happen in five years, when our workers retire.”

Asked how her life has changed, Ms Loo, who is single, says: “Definitely less social life. This job is physically exhausting. I spend more time recovering at home. I also have to work on public holidays, so I have less time to meet my friends. I can’t go on vacations as and when I want to, like in the past. I have to be there to ensure that we earn enough to pay our staff first.

“But some days, I find myself eager to go to work at 5am. I enjoy the process even though there are quite a few trade-offs. The space for innovation – that part excites me a lot. And the legacy, sharing our story and Hainanese culture.”

Where: 389 Guillemard Road, open: 8.30am to 8pm (Tuesdays to Sundays), closed on Mondays; 611 Balestier Road, open: 8.30am to 7pm (Mondays to Saturdays), closed on Sundays; B1-K102 Great World, open: 10am to 9pm daily; B1-K10 Tampines Mall, open: 8am to 9pm daily
Info: @tanjongrhu_pau on Instagram

The family that makes bao together sticks together.

Tanjong Rhu Pau founder Yap Peng Wah, 78, can fill and pleat a char siew bao in 10 seconds. His wife, Madam Hoon Poh Choo, 76, can do it in nine. Their son Wei Jie, 42, clocks in at 10 seconds; and his sister Hsiao Cheng, 47, gets it done in 12.

The siblings stepped in to help their parents in 2015, and now run the business. This is looking to be a busy year for them.

The brand is now on Facebook and Instagram, with a website to follow in May 2026. The family will also be unveiling a new logo.

They are opening two new kiosks in March 2026 – at Food Republic at Mandai Wildlife Reserve and Food Junction at Junction 8 mall in Bishan.

At Takashimaya Food Hall, their Chin Sin Huan bao kiosk, a brand the siblings started in 2018, will be rebranded as Tanjong Rhu Pau later in 2026. From March 10, people can order its bao for delivery on Oddle.

Ms Yap, who has a degree in business administration from the National University of Singapore and used to work in marketing, says the strategy is to make the bao convenient to buy.

She says: “Rental for a big space is really too expensive now. If we can reduce fixed costs with a very small space, we find that is more efficient. We want to keep it simple. We are still very much focused on getting the bao done correctly.

“Consumers these days probably relish convenience more than in the good old days. In my dad’s time, people would drive to a place to buy something. Nowadays, you don’t really get that. So, for us to reach out to the wider, younger population, we need to be in the malls or places that are more accessible.”

Customers span the ages. Many of them grew up eating Tanjong Rhu Pau, and now buy them for their children.

Taxi drivers were the ones who spread the word about the Yap family’s bao. The older Mr Yap learnt how to make bao when he was 18 from a bao seller, and later apprenticed under a bao master in Old Airport Road.

He went on to sell bao from the family’s coffee shop in Jalan Batu in the Tanjong Rhu area. In front of it was a large carpark, and cabbies would stop by for meals.

The older Mr Yap remembers how one cabbie would arrive just as the big bao were coming out of the steamer, and order four of them to eat on the spot. Those cabbies would tell passengers and other drivers about “the bao at Tanjong Rhu”. That then became the name of the business.

When customers started remarking that his bao were too doughy, he made them with less dough, though keeping the same amount of filling. That has become a Tanjong Rhu Pau signature – petite bao ($1.10 each) stuffed with char siew that is still charcoal-grilled today.

The younger Mr Yap was working towards a doctorate in water technology at Nanyang Technological University before joining the family business. He says that except for a mixer for the dough, and a sheeter to stretch it, things are pretty much done the way his dad did it.

Each bao is still made by hand. The mother dough, or starter, is 30 years old, and a portion of it is fermented overnight for the next day’s dough.

He says: “We did explore using machinery, but we realised it’s very different. For Chin Sin Huan, we bought combi ovens for the char siew, but we could not get the taste right, so in the end, we went back to the traditional charcoal grilled method.

“We process the meat for the filling ourselves, cutting away the fatty parts, grinding and marinating it. And our char siew sauce is cooked in a wok. This is something we keep close to our heart, and it’s how we want the business to be.”

The bao (from $1 each for red bean or lotus paste), siew mai (70 cents each), Fan Choy and Glutinous Rice ($2.60 each) are made at the shops in Guillemard Road and Balestier Road. The signature offering is the petite Char Siew Pau ($1.10 each). When customers remarked that the char siew bao was doughy, founder Mr Yap retooled it, using less dough but the same amount of filling. Today, it is still filled with charcoal-grilled char siew.

Many of the staff have been with the business for decades and do not need to weigh out dough or fillings, making each bao in seconds. The business employs 20 full- and part-time kitchen staff, and 20 full and part-time staff to man the shops and kiosks.

Mr Yap senior splits his time between the Balestier Road, Guillemard Road and Jalan Batu shops, while his son is stationed in Balestier Road. Ms Yap works on the administration part of the business.

The family makes it a point to eat its bao, siew mai and steamed rice every day, to make sure the wares taste as they should. The younger Mr Yap’s two daughters, aged eight and six, love the lotus paste and char siew bao, while Ms Yap’s six-year old daughter enjoys the red bean paste ones.

 Asked if they want their kids to follow in their footsteps, Ms Yap, who, like her brother, draws a four-figure monthly salary, says: “I’m not sure about that. My parents didn’t want us to take over the business and now I understand why.

“We are thinking that for our next generation, it’s better that they do their own thing. It’s a tough business.”

Her brother adds: “The key thing for us is that we want to preserve this craft for as long as we can.”