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CNA
an hour ago
- CNA
A homesick craving inspired her to launch a Singaporean supper club and food brand in London
It was a comforting bowl of bak chor mee (minced meat noodle) that changed it all. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Megan Tan was living in London and working as a finance lawyer. With the city in lockdown, her homesick roommate was craving local Singaporean food. 'It was her birthday and we couldn't go anywhere. I wanted to do something thoughtful for her, so I asked her what her favourite dish was. It was bak chor mee, so I Googled a recipe and made it for the first time,' Tan, 30, recalled. That simple act of cooking for a friend was enough to spark a realisation in Tan for two reasons. 'First, it was the feeling of making something with my own two hands. And second, it was making something that I love so much, and that she loved so much too, and the joy that it brought to the both of us.' In fact, Tan enjoyed the experience of cooking for others so much that for the rest of the lockdown, she started opening up orders for dishes such as wonton mee, Hokkien mee and carrot cake on her Instagram. During the weekends, she would cook the dishes and cycle out to deliver them herself. 'I had a lot of fun and I think it gave me a lot of meaning and human connection at a time when it was very short in supply,' Tan, a self-professed extrovert, reflected. Eventually, she launched Homi Kitchen, a supper club run out of her apartment where she serves Singaporean dishes to guests. What started as a nostalgic dinner for her social bubble soon evolved into something bigger. Beyond the supper club, Tan is on a mission to create a brand that can make 'Singaporean flavours easily accessible on supermarket shelves for everyone in the UK', said the young entrepreneur. In early 2025, Tan went on to launch her first product – the Giga Chicken Rice Chilli sauce, a flavour-packed condiment inspired by one Singapore's most beloved dishes, with more products already in the pipeline. FROM LAW TO LOCAL FLAVOURS Born and raised in Singapore, Tan grew up in a three-generation household in Serangoon, with her grandmother, an avid cook, cooking Teochew dishes every day for the family. 'She's the queen of the kitchen. I would try to help, but quite often I would be making things worse,' Tan recalled with a laugh. It wasn't until she studied law at the University of Oxford in the UK that she began experimenting with cooking herself. 'I missed food from home, and the funny thing is, I didn't have a kitchen in my college accommodation. I only had a rice cooker, and I had all my sauces and ingredients in a box.' She made do with the limited setup, cooking Asian comfort dishes such as chicken curry and katsu curry in that one pot. She often invited friends to gather in her room for dinner, who brought over their own bowls and cutlery. After completing her legal training back in Singapore, Tan made the jump to move to London full-time. 'Within the legal industry, London is one of the big hot spots for top-notch firms and teams. It is also a very international, cosmopolitan city,' she said of the move. A few years into her legal career, Tan quickly realised that her true passion laid elsewhere. 'What sparked the greatest joy for me was being in the consumer retail space, and seeing my customers really enjoying my food and being grateful for the comfort that a simple bowl of noodles brought them,' said Tan. Homi Kitchen was a way for her to indulge in her love for cooking while balancing a demanding day job. 'Why I started the supper club was to also test my theory that there's a growing interest in Singaporean food in the UK. It was a way to meet people who weren't necessarily from Singapore or Malaysia to find out how they know about the cuisine and why they were curious enough to try it,' Tan explained. For her very first supper club, Tan whipped up a Hainanese chicken rice feast. Later on, the menus featured other Singaporean hawker favourites such as carrot cake, wonton mee and even a chilli crab and black pepper crab session. Seats are usually priced around £25 (S$42). At the table, 'there was always a mix of nationalities, which is reflective of life in London,' said Tan. Despite the success of the supper club, Tan knew that if she were to leave her job, it would not be to continue hosting private dinners. Instead, she had bigger ambitions. 'Here in London, we already have a growing number of Singaporean and Malaysian restaurants. We have Singapulah, which still has long queues months after opening, and we've got Old Chang Kee as well, so I don't think London necessarily needs another restaurant,' said Tan. 'I think what the UK is lacking is authentic Singaporean flavours on grocery shelves.' View this post on Instagram A post shared by Homi Kitchen (@ From her very first supper club session, where she served Hainanese chicken rice, Tan was already toying with the idea of selling the accompanying chilli sauce she had made from scratch. Over time, she used each supper club as a testing ground, gathering feedback from her diners. 'I wanted to get a good sense of what would be a great product that people actually want,' she said. 'By the time I left my job, I had a very clear idea of what the product would be and the kind of people who would be interested in the brand.' COOKING UP A BRAND With the Giga Chilli Sauce, Tan wants to bridge the gap between home-cooked meals and dining out at a restaurant. The condiment is meant to help home cooks add interesting, familiar flavours to their dishes with minimal effort. Tan's customers have been creative in the way they use the sauce too. Beyond pairing it with chicken rice, they have slathered it on sandwiches or stirred it into their takeaway pho from the nearby Vietnamese restaurant. At one of Homi Kitchen's pop-up events, Tan even created a 'chicken rice cocktail' in the form of a spicy margarita with the chilli sauce as a base, in collaboration with a bar in Camden market. Customers interested in the Giga Chilli Sauce can currently purchase it online on Homi Kitchen's website. The condiment is also stocked at grocers, food courts and delis such as Raya at Borough Market, Eat 17 on Orford Road, Polhill Farm Shop at London Road and Harvest E1 on Brick Lane. The name Homi Kitchen – a playful twist on 'home' that also means 'homie', as in friend – reflects Tan's dual vision for the brand. 'As I started out as a homerun supper club, I wanted people to feel at home with the brand. It's also a reminder to myself that my focus is also on getting my products into other people's homes.' The brand wants to share the 'crazy rich flavours of Singapore" beyond its shores, as its tagline encapsulates. And for Tan, the chilli sauce is just the beginning. 'Right now, it's just chilli sauce, but long-term, the other products I have in mind are stuff like ready made char kway teow that you can pop into the microwave,' Tan elaborated. 'Of course, it will never be as good as going to your favourite store in Singapore, but my goal is to get as close as humanly and to fill that gap for someone who misses local food, or someone who is curious about the cuisine.' Tan is already working on Homi Kitchen's next condiment, the Hei Hei Black Pepper Sauce, slated to launch soon. 'At my black pepper and chilli crab supper club, some of the guests loved the black pepper sauce so much that they asked if I was going to start selling it,' shared Tan. 'I started looking into it and making the sauce for people to try at my events, putting them on things like tater tots just to get people to see it as something different and seeing how it lands. People really loved the flavour.' FINDING PURPOSE Giving up a prestigious career in law to pursue an uncharted path is a bold move. 'Growing up in Asia, and maybe especially in my generation, you are brought up to study hard to secure a good, stable job for the rest of your life,' said Tan, who attended Raffles Girls School and later Raffles Institution in Singapore. 'Reflecting on my younger years, part of why I chased a law career was because my friends were doing so,' Tan reflected. 'But as objectively desirable I knew a law career is for many people, eventually I had to accept that I would never be 100 per cent happy.' Stepping into entrepreneurship is 'unfamiliar territory' for her family, who do not come from a business background. While her parents were initially worried she was making a rash decision, they supported her wholeheartedly. Tan makes regular trips back to Singapore to spend time with her family. Her go-to dish when she's home? A comforting bowl of bak chor mee. Back in London, Tan continues to host supper club sessions while developing new products for Homi Kitchen. In June, she hosted two sold-out events in collaboration with Hong Kong milk tea brand Chadong. On the menu were dishes such as Hei Hei Pepper Pork Belly, Hainanese Chicken Rice and Popiah, while Chadong contributed milk bread prawn toast, lychee and lime granita and Hong Kong French toast ice cream bars. Despite the uncertainties that lie with entrepreneurship, Tan has found a sense of purpose in building something of her own. 'Whatever the outcome, I can say that I already find this journey meaningful,' she reflected. 'This is something I intrinsically want to do. No one needs to tell me that I'm doing a good job, or that it's the right thing to do. It still feels right for me."
Straits Times
2 hours ago
- Straits Times
LTA, Singapore bus operators reviewing Malaysia's request to start services from JB at 4am
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Commuters queue to board the Causeway Link bus to Johor Bahru on April 9. SINGAPORE – The Land Transport Authority (LTA) and Singapore bus operators are reviewing a request from Malaysia to start operating cross-border bus services from Johor Bahru an hour earlier. LTA told The Straits Times on July 29 that it had received a request from Malaysia's Land Public Transport Agency on June 17 to start operating cross-border bus services earlier and that it is 'working with our bus operators to review the request'. These operators are public bus companies SBS Transit (SBST) and SMRT and some private bus operators. Malaysian news daily The Star said on July 24 that the Land Public Transport Agency is in talks with LTA to ask Singapore's bus operators to start services at 4am, instead of 5am. According to The Star, Johor state Works, Transportation, Infrastructure and Communication Committee chairman Mohamad Fazli Mohamad Salleh said long queues of Singapore-bound passengers would form at the Johor Bahru Checkpoint at 4am, so he hopes that an earlier start time would tackle the pre-dawn rush. SBST currently operates service 160 from Johor Bahru Checkpoint, with departures starting at 5am on weekdays and 5.50am on weekends or public holidays. It also runs service 170 between Larkin Terminal in Johor Bahru and Queen Street Terminal near Jalan Besar, with departures starting from 5.20am on weekdays and 5.30am on weekends or public holidays. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore $3b money laundering case: MinLaw names 6 law firms taken to task over involvement in property deals Singapore Police reopen access to all areas in Marina Bay after crowd congestion eases at NDP Preview area Singapore Opening of Woodlands Health has eased load on KTPH, sets standard for future hospitals: Ong Ye Kung Asia KTM plans new passenger rail service in Johor Bahru to manage higher footfall expected from RTS Singapore HSA investigating teen allegedly vaping on MRT train Asia 4 workers dead after falling into manhole in Japan Singapore New vehicular bridge connecting Punggol Central and Seletar Link to open on Aug 3 Singapore New S'pore jobs portal launched for North West District residents looking for work near home Service 170X – a supplementary service that plies only a section of service 170's route – is also run by SBST, with the first bus leaving Johor Bahru at 8.28am on weekdays. Additionally, SMRT operates service 950 across the Causeway from Johor Bahru Checkpoint towards the Woodlands Temporary Bus Interchange. No information on the starting times for its Singapore-bound service is publicly available, but the Johor Bahru-bound service departs from Woodlands at 5.30am every day. Other private bus operators, including Singapore-Johore Express, Ridewell Travel and Transtar Travel, ply routes from Larkin Bus Terminal and Johor Bahru Checkpoint to Singapore. ST has contacted all public and private bus operators for comment. SMRT and SBST directed these queries to LTA. Associate Professor Walter Theseira, a transport economist at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, said it may be more costly and logistically challenging to operate cross-border bus services outside the usual scheduled hours. This is because public bus operators face labour constraints, he added. It would be more difficult to offer services at earlier start times as drivers may not want to accept these shifts, and it would affect manpower planning for the rest of the day. And these operational constraints may lead to higher fares, noted Prof Theseira, since buses operating outside scheduled hours are typically expected to cover a larger share of costs from fares – as in the case of the now-defunct late-night bus services, which charged higher fares of above $4. He noted that there may also be concerns from Singaporeans about providing more subsidies so that public transport operators can start their cross-border services earlier because they would primarily benefit Malaysians working in Singapore. While private operators can also adjust the operating hours of such services, he said they must be able to make profits to offer extended services. Malaysians who cross the Causeway daily to get to work in Singapore, such as Mr Eerman Dzulkurnai, 39, said he would be happy to have potentially more cross-border bus services to use as he typically gets to Johor Bahru Checkpoint by around 4am to avoid getting stuck in traffic and be able to arrive at his workplace in Pioneer by 9am. The information technology support officer noted that by 6am, there are usually snaking queues, and it can take travellers one hour to squeeze onto a bus to Singapore. He added that early on the morning of July 21, when bus drivers under Malaysian bus operator Causeway Link went on strike, he was left with no choice but to walk 30 minutes across the Causeway.
CNA
8 hours ago
- CNA
Expiring Tanjong Pagar Distripark lease paints uncertain future for tenants
A bustling arts cluster at Tanjong Pagar Distripark may have to find a new home, with the building's lease set to expire in 2027 amid the redevelopment of the area. That is even as the number of arts groups at the location has more than quadrupled since 2021, with a 20 per cent boost in footfall from the year after. Muhammad Bahajjaj with more.
