SINGAPORE \u2013 For almost 30 years, Patrick Tay made a living designing spaces in Beijing. Now, the 60-year-old spends his days working in one measuring just 2.6m by 3.35m.<\/p>\n
At Tuan Tuan Yuan Yuan dessert stall in Chinatown Complex, the former interior designer starts work at about 9.30am, preparing his signature Cheng Tng ($3).<\/p>\n
The dessert contains nine ingredients, including dried persimmon, winter melon and pang da hai, or malva nut \u2013 which takes about four hours to soak and pick through. \u201cI am a foodie. I believe if I want to cook something, it has to be the best version I can produce,\u201d says Tay, who opened the stall in February 2026. He has six items on the menu.<\/p>\n
His pursuit of quality extends to the mangoes for his Mango Sago ($4.50). Instead of relying on a fruit supplier, he scouts markets and fruit stalls around Singapore for suitable ones.<\/p>\n Tay spares no effort in procuring the best mangoes for his Mango Sago dessert.<\/p>\n ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Tay, who usually travels by public transport, has even rented cars from car-sharing platforms to head to The Bedok Marketplace, which opens till late at night, in search of the right fruit.<\/p>\n His attention to detail was honed through decades of training and work as an interior designer.<\/p>\n He attended River Valley High School and graduated from the now-defunct <\/b>Baharuddin Vocational Institute, Singapore\u2019s first formal design school, with a diploma in interior design in 1986. He later co-founded Singapore interior design firm Embryo Design and became its design director.<\/p>\n A hotel project took him to Beijing in late 1992. Drawn by the opportunities there, he stayed.<\/p>\n He met fellow Singaporean Regina Ong, now 60, at a gathering for Singaporeans in Beijing in 1994. They married in 1997 and have two daughters, Nichole, 28, and Justine, 25.<\/p>\n Nichole, who previously ran an education centre, recently launched her own start-up centred on a storytelling mobile application called Phases, while Justine is a treasurer in the finance industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n Beijing was the family\u2019s second home. There, Tay ran his own interior design firm and also dabbled in food and beverage out of interest. He opened a pub called Emergency Room in 2002 and ran it for a year. In 2007, he opened dessert stall Sweet Talk, which his wife operated for about a year.<\/p>\n The family\u2019s return to Singapore was not planned.<\/p>\n They came back to celebrate Chinese New Year with relatives here in 2020, as they did every year, with just two weeks\u2019 worth of clothes in their suitcases. When reports of an infectious virus emerged, they mistakenly thought the lockdowns would be temporary.<\/p>\n Tay returned to China for work, while his wife and daughters extended their stay in Singapore. But when they tried to return to Beijing, flights were suspended and their existing visas were not accepted. Repeated attempts to obtain new visas were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n Their belongings, two dogs and decades-long friendships remained in Beijing.<\/p>\n Tay, meanwhile, travelled within China for work and did not see his family in person for the next 1\u00bd years as his wife and two daughters were not able to obtain visas to return to Beijing.<\/p>\n Daily video calls lasting from 10 to 30 minutes helped him cope with life alone. \u201cKnowing that they were safe and living well was comforting to me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In mid-2021, his wife and daughters moved back into the family\u2019s five-room Housing Board flat in Pasir Ris, which had been rented out.<\/p>\n With the interior design market in China becoming increasingly challenging, Tay, the family\u2019s sole breadwinner, decided that staying apart was no longer worthwhile and he returned to Singapore.<\/p>\n \u201cFamily takes priority above all else,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n But homecoming was not easy. \u201cAt the beginning, I felt very lost,\u201d he says. \u201cI had spent almost 30 years building my life in Beijing.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued taking on freelance design projects, but was contemplating retirement by 2022. Sitting idle did not suit him, however. He sketched in his free time and began thinking about returning to his other passion \u2013 food.<\/p>\n Having previously ventured into F&B, he knew the risks. \u201cIf I open a cafe, I have to burn through a lot of money paying for rental and labour,\u201d he says. \u201cA hawker stall is most sensible.\u201d<\/p>\n He successfully bid for the Chinatown Complex unit in November 2025 and spent about three months testing recipes before opening Tuan Tuan Yuan Yuan with a judicious investment of $12,000.<\/p>\n He has equipment including a Thermomix for making his yam paste dessert Orh Nee ($2.50), as well as an ice machine that produces ice fine enough for bingsu.<\/p>\n The stall\u2019s name means reunion, a nod to Tay\u2019s homecoming and devotion to his family. Its signboard and logo, designed by him with input from his family, feature four round jelly balls in a bowl, representing him, his wife and their daughters.<\/p>\n Many of the recipes originated with his wife, but Tay has put his own stamp on them.<\/p>\n His Cheng Tng is based on the version the family sold in Beijing. He dislikes overly sweet, factory-prepared versions and uses golden-hued Thai dried longans instead of the darker variety, which he says turns soggy.<\/p>\n He prepares most of the ingredients from scratch, cooking the ginkgo nuts in pandan syrup, and uses palm sugar instead of white sugar for a more aromatic finish.<\/p>\n Nine ingredients go into the Tay\u2019s Cheng Tng, which is freshly cooked every morning.<\/p>\n ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n His wife, who works as a finance secretary, remains his toughest critic. \u201cI have a quality control inspector,\u201d he jokes. \u201cShe will scream at me if I am not cooking her recipes the right way and up to her standard.\u201d<\/p>\n The couple also spent three months refining the recipe for Yuzu Honey Ice ($3.50), a refreshing dessert made with Korean yuzu honey and housemade, tang yuan-sized yuzu jelly balls conceived by Tay. \u201cI am a designer. I am always looking at aesthetics,\u201d he says, adding that taste and appearance are equally important.<\/p>\n His design background came in handy when planning the workflow in the tight 8.7 sq m space. But nothing prepared him for the physical demands of hawker life.<\/p>\n Despite having two fans in the stall, he still perspires in the heat. During the first few weeks, his legs hurt from standing for long hours, but he has since got used to it.<\/p>\n The stall gradually built up a pool of regulars, mostly seniors living nearby. Then, almost overnight, Tay found himself dealing with queues.<\/p>\n Nichole had filmed her father to help market his stall and add to the portfolio of her storytelling mobile app Phases. The video, posted on July 7, garnered 453,000 views, 17,400 likes and 6,385 shares.<\/p>\n<\/picture><\/div>
Unexpected homecoming<\/h2>\n
Desserts with a designer\u2019s eye<\/h2>\n
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