Min Jiang Kueh Master: Granny’s Pancake Hawker Trained Some Of S’pore’s Most Popular Pancake Sellers
What’s not commonly known is that some of Singapore’s other popular min jiang kueh sellers, like Mian Mian Bu Duan, Eva’s Pancake and My Pancake, were trained by hawker Billy Ng, 58, who started Granny’s Pancake 25 years ago as a second career.
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The min jiang kueh master
Back in the ’90s, Billy was working as a copper wire product analyst at Japanese giant Sumitomo Corp when he was retrenched. In search of employment, he ended up helping his sister at her min jiang kueh stall at Tampines Street 11 and created his own recipe by modifying her version.
“Before I became a hawker, I hated cooking. But after I started cooking I realised I had this previously undiscovered ability. In life, you never know if you don’t try,” Billy tells 8days.sg.
Despite his lack of interest, he reckons that his culinary chops came naturally due to his Peranakan heritage. “My mum was Peranakan, and I inherited her penchant for cooking,” he opines.
He called it Granny’s Pancakes as min jiang kueh “is a snack from my granny’s generation.” But according to him, he doesn’t open outlets. Or direct ones, at least.
The other Granny’s Pancake stalls are owned and run by his former employees, who pay Billy a one-time fee to use his famous brand name and also buy flour from him for their min jiang kueh batter. “Is this considered a franchise? I’m not sure. I don’t collect royalties from them or anything,” he muses.
Teaching a heritage trade
As a veteran min jiang kueh hawker, Billy has taught over 20 ‘disciples’ on the finer points of making pancakes. “It’s a heritage trade. If I don’t pass it on, it will vanish. If I teach someone a skill, they can make a living off it,” he reasons.
Out of his 20 students, around 10 were assigned by NEA’s hawker apprenticeship programme, which accepts people from all walks of life who are keen to set up their own hawker stall.
Billy took on his first NEA mentee in 2019, just before the Covid-19 Circuit Breaker. He shares: “I want to teach those who really want to open a stall. I also trained two young pilots who wanted to sell min jiang kueh when they had to stop flying during the pandemic, but I think they have returned to flying now (laughs).”
On training ‘competitors’
We ask him if he was inadvertently training future business rivals. He shakes his head. “My philosophy is that we are our own greatest competitor,” he tells us seriously. “If there are people who are better than me, I need to reflect on myself.”
His apprentices work with him at his stall for durations ranging from a few months to even one and a half years, which was the case for Mian Mian Bu Duan’s millennial hawker Li Jiali.
On his part, Billy teaches these students everything that goes into setting up and running a min jiang kueh stall, except for his proprietary batter recipe.
“I teach them the basics and the live cooking procedure but not my recipe, ’cos that’s a conflict of interest. But recipes are only secondary. [My mentees] are very smart. They develop their own recipes and figure things out themselves,” he says.
Hawkers with the ‘X’ factor
Billy chooses who he wants to teach, and can suss out whether a mentee has potential to be a successful min jiang kueh hawker. “The intelligent ones will ask a lot of questions instead of just following the book,” he observes.
He explains that excelling in F&B is not just about offering quality food. In fact, the process is similar to, say, auditioning for a reality singing competition.
Billy shares: “You need to have the X factor as a hawker. Your stall needs to have something that attracts customers, be it your service standard or the taste of your food. You need to know how to bond with customers and say what they want to hear, not just tell them the prices. It’s a whole art.”
Making min jiang kueh looks easy, but it’s not
Making min jiang kueh looks easy enough: Pour the batter on a heated griddle, and wait for it to cook to a golden brown. “It looks easy, but it’s not,” Billy deadpans.
He points out: “You have to be very attentive to details every step of the way. A lot of people can’t do that. When I was learning how to cook, I had to watch the stove closely from start to end. And if you exert too much pressure when spreading the batter, your pancake will not be fluffy because the batter can’t rise.”
A good slice of min jiang kueh, he says, “must be fluffy and soft on the inside and crispy on the outside. It can’t stick to your teeth.”
Billy admits that he has a lot of faith in his own product, saying: “My confidence level is very high. I can teach people how to run a business, but to succeed they have to depend on themselves. You need to have the passion.”
Billy’s menu
Billy’s flagship Granny’s Pancake stall at Ghim Moh Food Centre offers min jiang kueh by the slice (from $1.20 to $1.40) or whole pan (yields 10 slices, from $12 to $14). The flavours available are Peanut, Red Bean, Coconut and Peanut + Peanut Butter.
There’s a constant queue at his stall, so you will most likely get freshly-cooked min jiang kueh as the slices move so fast. During our visit, we tried a warm slice of peanut butter pancake.
While we find the min jiang kueh quality at other Granny’s Pancake stalls hit or miss (bearing in mind that the stallowners all use their own recipes), Billy’s OG version is perhaps unsurprisingly one of the best that we have had in Singapore so far.
The pancake is not loaded with so much filling that it spills messily as we eat, but cradles just the right amount of creamy peanut butter and sugary grated peanuts. It’s worth queueing the 10 minutes or so for this.
Billy quips: “Young customers tend to like the peanut butter and coconut flavours, and older folks like peanut and red bean paste. It’s like dessert lah, that’s why people love min jiang kueh so much.”
Granny’s Pancake (original Ghim Moh outlet) is at #01-52 Ghim Moh Market & Food Centre, 20 Ghim Moh Rd, S270020. Open Tues-Sun, 5.30am-2pm (usually sold out by 1.30pm).
Photos: Dillon Tan
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