Delish Salted Egg “Lava” & Curry Puffs From $1.40 At Ubi Industrial Estate Hawker Stall
The Sarawak-born hawker behind Fang Handmade Curry Puff also bakes tasty egg tarts.
Fang Handmade montage 2
Within a quiet industrial estate in Ubi lies Fang Handmade Curry Puff, a hidden gem of a curry puff hawker stall peddling the usual deep-fried chicken curry version, along with fancier flavours like runny salted egg “lava” and chicken char siew.
The hawkers behind it are cheerful Sarawak-born hawker Sim Tze Chung, 37, who does the cooking, while his wife Fang Xiao Lan, a 39-year-old born in Fujian, China, packs the orders.
They sport cute matching outfits, complete with identical aprons. While Fang Handmade Curry Puff has only operated in its current coffeeshop since early February, the couple (now both Singapore Permanent Residents) ran the stall at a kopitiam just a few minutes’ walk away since 2018.
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The couple met while working at Toast Box
Prior to the start of their hawker journey, the couple worked in the central kitchen of coffee and kaya toast chain Toast Box for more than a decade. That was also where they met: “I was her supervisor,” Tze Chung shares with a twinkle in his eyes.
However, that wasn’t where the hawker learned to bake, as “we both started from the ground up by washing plates and preparing ingredients. We cooked some local dishes that Toast Box sold, but there wasn’t any chance to learn pastry skills there (he’d initially applied to be a baker at BreadTalk but was assigned as part of the kitchen crew at Toast Box instead),” he explains.
Instead, Tze Chung credits most of his pastry experience to a three-year stint at a small bakery back in Sarawak before he came to Singapore, where he learned how to make Western pastries like croissants as well as local bakes like tau sar piah.
Struck out as hawkers in 2018
In 2018, he and his wife decided to leave their stable F&B jobs to become hawkers. “I’m very grateful for my experience [at Toast Box], as I learnt a lot about food safety and hygiene and business management. Our bosses were always nice to us too,” he explains. “But I also wanted to be my own boss, and run a business for myself.”
He opened a hawker stall with Xiao Lan selling curry chicken (using a recipe he’d picked up back in Sarawak) in a Woodlands kopitiam, but quickly pivoted to curry puffs as “business was very bad”. So bad, in fact, that they closed shop after just four months, despite the pivot.
“Honestly, I felt like giving up [and finding a salaried job]. But my wife told me that since we already left our jobs, we had to give it our best shot. She said, ‘If you have to lose money, you might as well lose everything,’” he explains, estimating that they’d sunk around $30K into equipment at that point.
Xiao Lan adds, “I felt that we’d already invested our money into working for ourselves. We already came out, so we can’t go back – we have to persevere. Earn a little, earn a lot, we still need to try until the end.”
Named Fang Handmade Curry Puff after wife
Thus, they decided to try their luck in an industrial estate canteen in Ubi – Tze Chung sweetly decided to name their stall Fang Handmade Curry Puff after his wife, as she was the one who pushed for them to persevere. “I said, ‘Since you’re the one telling us to keep trying, we should name it after you,’” he says with a laugh.
They lasted close to three years there, selling bak chor mee alongside their curry puffs “to earn a little extra” as foot traffic there wasn’t good. “Once Covid-19 hit, things got quite bad, but it was still a useful time for us. I used to only sell three flavours of curry puff, but during the pandemic, we had a lot of time to experiment and come up with new flavours,” he adds.
They now sell 500 curry puffs a day
In late 2021, they decided to relocate to their current location, paying slightly higher rent in exchange for “a much better crowd” from nearby industrial buildings. Tze Chung tells us that he sells around “500 curry puffs a day” – enough to focus on curry puffs and other pastries alone.
“We’re making a profit, but it isn’t much. Eggs, oil and other ingredients are getting more expensive, and we’re definitely affected by the price increase of ingredients. But we want to stick with our current prices for now unless there’s another big jump,” he tells us.
The most popular item is the standard curry puff, though newfangled flavours like salted egg lava are well-received by younger customers too. How did decide on the more modern fillings? The hawker shares: “I always tell people that I like to cook what I like to eat (which in his case, includes Malaysian-style siew bao, a baked pork bun similar to char siew sou). There are plans for halal certification in future – now, only some of their ingredients are halal-certified, though they don’t use any pork or lard.
Chicken Curry, $1.40 (8 DAYS Pick!)
The signature curry puff is covered with satisfyingly crispy, flaky pastry and has a mellow buttery fragrance (although it’s mixed with some margarine too). It’s stuffed with moist curried chopped chicken breast, diced potatoes and a quarter of a boiled egg. The rempah is on the milder side, but sufficiently fragrant and moreish. While the pastry could be a little thinner, we find the filling-to-pastry ratio generous enough for the $1.40 price tag.
Sardine, $1.40
The hawkers’ other curry puff flavours are visually identical, so the hawkers use a little stamp with food-safe ink to tell the snacks apart. Tze Chung tells us that the sardine flavour is their spiciest option, as they cook the tinned sardines with lots of onions and chilli padi to rid it of any fishiness.
However, we find the filling only slightly spicier than the chicken version, with a tomato-rich sweetness. The filling is also wetter, though it doesn’t soak through the flaky pastry even after our journey home. Quite yummy, but we think it could’ve been spicier.
Salted Egg Lava, $1.50 (8 DAYS Pick!)
A sweet-savoury core of molten salted egg yolk “lava” – made oozy and delicious with fresh milk, butter and custard powder – enrobed with crispy pastry. Sedap. Just be careful when biting into one, as the salted egg yolk filling might gush out and burn your tongue.
BBQ Chicken, $1.50
According to Tze Chung, he based this flavour on siew bao, which is popular in Seremban but also sold in Sarawak where the hawker hails from – here, he replaces char siew with chicken breast cooked with soy sauce, onions and carrots. The resulting puff is a passable deep-fried imitation of the pastry, even if the stuffing tastes more like chicken stew instead of char siew. Still quite enjoyable though.
Mayo Tuna, $1.40
The stall’s other seafood puff is packed with canned tuna, mayonnaise, and chilli padi. Between the two fish options, we prefer the sardine version as the filling is juicier and punchier.
Egg Tart, $1.50 (8 DAYS Pick!)
The only baked item on the menu, and a worthy new addition. Tze Chung doesn’t pledge allegiance to either the popular Hong Kong-style egg tart with wobbly egg custard in a shell of crumbly pastry or its scorched top, flaky-skinned Portuguese cousin – “my style”, he quips – though this bake clearly resembles the former.
We like the silky, eggy custard made with egg and three different brands of fresh milk. The custard’s sweetness is just right – an excellent companion to the thinnish, buttery, cookie-like crust.
Bottom line
While we’re fond of the salted egg yolk lava puff here, the curry chicken version is also worth the calories. So too the not-too-sweet, wobbly egg tarts. Worth a trip to Ubi for some yummy, reasonably-priced tea time snacks.
The details
Fang Handmade Curry Puff is at #01-15, Zervex Building, 8 Ubi Rd 2, S408538. Tel: 9382-0396. Open daily except Sun. Mon – Fri, 7am – 5pm; Sat, 7am – 2pm. More info via Facebook. Delivery via Deliveroo, Grabfood and Foodpanda.
Photos: Aik Chen
All photos cannot be reproduced without permission from 8days.sg
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