Latest news with #Singaporean-style
South China Morning Post
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
12 of the best new places to eat in Hong Kong, Macau in May 2025 and one to keep an eye on
May in Hong Kong is all about relaxed and casual restaurants serving comfort food and traditional fare, from Thai soup noodles and Japanese udon to marinated goose from a famed Taiwanese brand, as well as Singaporean-style chicken rice from a Lion City stalwart. Advertisement Over in Macau, there is an exciting new food hall presenting trending names and restaurants. Read on to see which new places are set to tickle your palate this May. 1. Yakiniku Sho The latest addition to Central's line-up of yakiniku , or Japanese grilled meat restaurants, specialises in tender Kuroge Wagyu beef. The restaurant features only two set menus priced at HK$790 (US$102) and HK$490 and offers full service – the staff help with the grilling. Highlights include thick-cut prime beef tongue and other selected rare cuts of beef. Shop 3, G/F, Central Plaza, 60 Wyndham Street, Central Mama Tiger Noodles serves plenty of Thai-style noodles, including Wagyu boat noodles. Photo: Mama Tiger Noodles 2. Mama Tiger Noodles The team behind the popular Wan Chai Italian restaurant Trattoria Felino are going off-piste with Mama Tiger Noodles, which brings the fiery flavours of Bangkok's street food scene to Hong Kong.
Straits Times
26-04-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
Tastemakers: How a supper stall side hustle became a $10-million mala empire for this 25-year-old
Sichuan peppercorn in the mala collagen soup is finely ground, so customers will not bite into whole peppercorns and feel the intense numbing effect. ST PHOTO: HEDY KHOO Tastemakers: How a supper stall side hustle became a $10-million mala empire for this 25-year-old SINGAPORE – At 10pm, when most students were winding down, Mr Lee Ray Sheng was firing up the wok at his Nanyang Technological University (NTU) hostel canteen stall. Armed with garlic, bean sprouts and soya sauce, the second-year computer science undergraduate transformed a quiet canteen into a late-night supper venue. In February 2020, the owner of Raydy Beehoon sold out 200 packets of his $3 supper set of fried beehoon, chicken wing and egg. That was just the first night . Within weeks, sales doubled. Over two months, he earned $70,000 in revenue. 'We cooked 30kg of beehoon and cracked 500 eggs a night. It was madness,' recalls Mr Lee, now 25. 'I used to pay hostel mates with cars to 'dabao' economy beehoon from a supper spot in Jurong West,' he says with a smile. 'Eventually, we thought – why not cook our own?' What inspired it all was regular suppers with his hostel study group. Four friends, four times a week, rustling up late-night plates of beehoon with ingredients bought from Sheng Siong supermarket. Their hostel pantry soon filled up with hungry hostel mates willing to barter soya sauce and frozen fried foods for a plate of supper. So, Mr Lee invested $5,000 of his savings – earned since age 14 from gigs like working at McDonald's – into Raydy Beehoon and rented a canteen stall. Every night, he and his friends cooked from 10pm to 2am. 'My friends helped for food and $8 an hour,' he says. Then Covid-19 hit. Most would have packed up. But he pivoted his business to make Telegram-based deliveries in a rented truck, pulling in $600,000 over the next two years. Scrappy start Entrepreneurship is in Mr Lee's blood. He is the second of three children born to a sales engineer at a semi-conductor company and a quality management consultant. At 13, he raised $600 selling bubble tea at a charity carnival at Maris Stella High School. At 17, he worked part-time then apprenticed at online food ordering company Grain, and learnt how scrappy start-ups scale up. But tragedy also honed his instincts. His younger brother died at age nine from a rare immune disorder. Mr Lee, then 12, was found to carry the same genetic risk. 'It changed everything,' he says. 'I became bolder. I didn't want to live with regrets. I live as if I'm writing a storybook – each chapter must be meaningful. If the book ended now, it would still be a good read.' Mr Lee Ray Sheng, co-founder and chief executive of Singaporean-style mala chain A Hot Hideout, wanted to present flavours suitable for the Singaporean palate. ST PHOTO: HEDY KHOO In 2020, a random comment he overheard on a bus on campus spurred him to start a new chapter. 'Someone said we did well only because we were the only supper option on campus,' recalls Mr Lee. 'I wanted to prove we could win during the day too.' He set his sights on mala, one of NTU students' most beloved foods . There were 12 mala stalls on campus. He decided to make his better and bigger. 'The mala soup was always too oily, too numbing. I wanted to change that,' he says. ' I wanted one you could actually enjoy.' So, he pestered the best mala chef on campus for his recipe. After three months, the chef – who had decided to head back to China – relented for a fee of $888. He gave Mr Lee and his friend and business partner Anran Ye, now 26, a crash course in mala paste preparation. It involved over 50 ingredients, of which 30 were spices. The duo also took on part-time gigs at popular mala joints in Chinatown and Orchard Road to learn the ropes. Support from day one Ms Ye was a data science undergraduate he met at a faculty orientation camp. 'We were hostel mates and cooked beehoon together in the pantry,' Mr Lee says. 'She was there from day one.' Ms Ye is the co-founder and chief of staff at A Hot Hideout, overseeing human resources, finance and marketing. He is the chief executive and takes care of business strategy and operations. With $40,000 saved from their beehoon venture, Mr Lee and Ms Ye opened their first mala restaurant in a quiet corner of NTU's North Hill, a cluster of hostels near the Jalan Bahar entrance. 'The spot was so tucked away, we called it a hideout,' Mr Lee says. 'We added 'Hot' for spicy food and 'A' to create the acronym AHH.' Buoyed by the success of their beehoon business, they were looking for a challenge. All the better that there was a Chinese-run mala stall in a canteen just 50m away from their restaurant. Mr Lee says: 'We wanted to prove people would come for our style of mala.' The rent was $5,000. They spent $15,000 on renovations, painting the space themselves and sourcing second-hand and free furniture from Carousell. Mr Lee cooked. Ms Ye manned the cashier and washed dishes. Four friends helped out part-time. Customers can opt for mantou, dory fish and luncheon meat to be deep-fried. ST PHOTO: HEDY KHOO Their take on mala is different. They add creamy scrambled eggs. Lotus root, potatoes, mantou and luncheon meat are deep-fried till crisp before being added to their Mala Xiang Guo stir-fry ($1.50 for the base) for crunch. At A Hot Hideout, lotus root and potatoes are deep-fried till crisp before being added to the Mala Xiang Guo stir-fry. ST PHOTO: HEDY KHOO When they started, ingredients were priced at $1.88 for 100g. The soup version featured a collagen base boiled for 12 hours. Sichuan peppercorn in the mala collagen soup is finely ground so customers will not bite into whole peppercorns and feel the intense numbing effect. ST PHOTO: HEDY KHOO The outlet started with only three base offerings – Mala Collagen Soup ($2.50), the non-spicy Collagen Soup ($2.50) and Mala Xiang Guo stir-fry ($1.50) – available in varying heat levels. The Mala Xiang Guo stir-fry is a popular option. ST PHOTO: HEDY KHOO Word spread through their Telegram group of 10,000 beehoon fans. They made $1,000 on day one. By the second month , they were profitable. Sacrificing sleep and more On most days, Mr Lee would be up by 7am, heading straight to the restaurant, where he would squeeze in an hour of schoolwork before prepping the food. After peak lunch hours, he had a breather from 3 to 5pm – just enough time to attend tutorials. He skipped lectures, relying on recorded sessions to catch up. His social life was the first thing to go. While his hostel mates partied, he and his crew scrubbed woks and restocked shelves. 'I averaged five hours of sleep a night,' he remembers. Some nights, he started studying only at 11pm, staying up till 2am for group projects. By mid-2021, with four full-time staff and steady student support, he was ready to test the waters off-campus. He opened a second outlet at a shophouse in Sembawang Road in September 2022. To drum up publicity, Mr Lee and his team took turns to pound the pavement, distributing 5,000 fliers to nearby HDB blocks over six months. When families and elderly customers descended on the Sembawang restaurant , they introduced non-spicy options like Tomato Collagen Soup and Oriental Stir-fry. Today, the soup options are still priced at $2.50 each, and the stir-fries pegged at $1.50. Customers now pick from 70 chilled ingredients – from cheese tofu and Taiwanese sausage to scallops and fish paste-stuffed beancurd skin. Items are charged according to weight at $2.88 for 100g. Mr Lee Ray Sheng offers 70 chilled ingredients at A Hot Hideout. ST PHOTO: HEDY KHOO In 2022, Mr Lee graduated with honours. He stepped back from the business to work as an analyst at consulting firm McKinsey & Company. A year later, he and Ms Ye, then pursuing her master's degree in finance and economics at the University of New South Wales in Australia, decided to shut down the beehoon business to focus on their restaurants. Scaling up In November 2023, Mr Lee quit his job at McKinsey as he saw the potential of growing A Hot Hideout, and launched a third outlet at Kinex mall. Annual revenue had hit close to $2 million with nobody at the helm. He decided to go all in. By January 2024, he was working full time as its chief executive. The third outlet broke even within three months. Ms Ye joined the company full time in June after completing her master's. To scale up, he knew they needed consistency. In March 2024, they invested $200,000 in a central kitchen in Woodlands to produce their own mala paste, a blend of over 50 ingredients. That year, they opened three more outlets, at Junction 10, Prince George's Park Residences at the National University Singapore and Cineleisure . The latest outlet launched in February at Eastpoint Mall, and the next outlet will debut at Sembawang Shopping Centre in May . Four more are planned by the year's end. Mr Lee Ray Sheng at A Hot Hideout's Cineleisure outlet. ST PHOTO: HEDY KHOO Today, A Hot Hideout employs around 120 people. Staff turnover was – and remains – a challenge. So, the founders turned to tech. With their computer and data science backgrounds, Mr Lee and Ms Ye prototyped self-ordering kiosks and kitchen systems tracking queue flow, cook times and stock. The kiosks now integrate with weighing scales, freeing staff to focus on service and hospitality. Customers weigh and submit their orders via a kiosk. ST PHOTO: HEDY KHOO Despite the rapid growth, what matters most to Mr Lee is scale of impact. 'Success is seeing people come back,' he says. 'A kid asking for less spice. Students bringing parents. Our food becoming a part of someone's life.' In 2024, he enrolled in an MBA at Oxford University, thinking it would sharpen his skills. But with his business on the brink of major expansion, he dropped out before classes began. 'I had to choose,' he says . 'And I chose this.' Mr Lee maintains that he did not start with grand plans – just a wok, a packet of beehoon and lots of grit. But from one hostel stall, he has cooked up a $10-million mala empire that is projected to turn over $20 million by the year's end. He now has plans to start a halal-certified brand similar to A Hot Hideout and expand it to Malaysia and Indonesia. He will also start selling the brand's lotus root chips, potato chips, soup bases and bottled mala chilli at its stores later in 2025 . Will he regret giving up a plush career at McKinsey and his Oxford MBA to sell mala? Mr Lee says he has no time for second-guessing . He is too focused on writing a new chapter for his story. Tastemakers is a personality profile series on food and beverage vendors who are creating a stir. Hedy Khoo is senior correspondent at The Straits Times. She covers food-related news, from reviews to human interest stories. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
