HDB Home Biz Selling Delish $3 Oyster Cakes Upgrades To Kiosk, Draws Queues

The brand’s origin story is spelled out in its name. Wai Yeen’s sixth floor HDB flat in Punggol is the site of his first experiments with cooking oyster cakes – tweaking recipes he found online – after craving the fritters in May last year.

“I severely overestimated the amount of ingredients,” he shares with a laugh. “So I ended up with much more than I could finish. My wife told me to sell the extras to our neighbours in our block [WhatsApp] group chat – to our surprise, they ended up loving it.” By June, Sixth Floor Oyster Cake was born when he and his wife, 36-year-old Joey Chang, decided to sell the fritters freshly fried twice a week without leaving their day jobs in sales in the maritime and tech industry, respectively.

“The reception was pretty overwhelming. Most slots would sell out fast, sometimes within minutes,” Wai Yeen shares, though production was limited to around 80 pieces on weekdays, and 200 on weekends. Their production capacity soon became the HBB’s limiting factor. “Using our stoves at home, we could only produce about 40 pieces an hour. As an HBB, we were also restricted from hiring [additional staff].” Another big problem, “the cleaning after cooking was horrendous. The problem with deep-frying at home is that there’s grease all over everything,” he adds with a laugh.

The biz was so promising that Wai Yeen decided to leave his sales manager job despite it being “very stable, as shipping was in high demand throughout the pandemic”. However, he saw opportunity in his food biz. “I felt that the business was very scalable. But if we stay as an HBB, we can’t scale up. By the end of [2020], there was a chance to put in a tender for a stall at Northshore Plaza I. I decided to take the chance to establish ourselves a little differently and go a bit upmarket [with a kiosk] in a mall,” he tells us.

Calvin came into the picture just as Wai Yeen was ceasing operations as a HBB – a chance encounter between the neighbours’ wives while watering the plants eventually led to a business partnership between their husbands. Apart from a 25-year career in the aviation industry, he more recently spent time as a purchaser for an F&B firm before landing his current gig as a private-hire driver. Those short stints procuring food and stoves for various kitchens over one-and-a-half years meant he had “expertise in managing F&B” that Wai Yeen lacked.

For Calvin, his reason for joining Sixth Floor Oyster Cake is simple. “After tasting [Wai Yeen’s] oyster cake, I loved the texture, the taste, the crunchiness. I knew the business would work,” he says simply.

And work it has, at least thus far. Sixth Floor Oyster Cake is perched on the second (there’s no sixth floor here) floor of Northshore Plaza I, a busy thoroughfare close to the Samudera LRT station exit. Throughout our Monday morning shoot, a never-ending stream of customers snap up their oyster cakes almost as fast as Wai Yeen and Calvin can fry them.

According to Wai Yeen, this pales in comparison to opening day – he describes it as “chaos” – when the pair were still serving a larger menu which included other snacks like sweet potato balls and nuggets. With only two deep-fryers, they weren’t able to keep up with orders for oyster cakes, leaving customers waiting for “up to an hour”. “We were left with a situation where our sign says ‘oyster cakes’ but we only had other items. It was a silly mistake, but it’s all part of learning,” the younger towkay adds.

The pair’s chief concern, for now, has shifted away from making good on their $120K investment into the business. “If you look at the figures, we’re doing okay. But the biggest problem now is finding staff. In the four days since opening, we’ve been working 16-hour days. It’s not sustainable,” Wai Yeen tells us. The soft-spoken Calvin just shakes his head and utters, “So tired.”

As mentioned, there’s just the one traditional oyster puff for now, with a limit of four fritters per customer. The full menu, once available, includes an old favourite from the brand’s HBB days – a fusion kimchi-stuffed fritter. An oyster-free version is also on the full menu – check in on their socials to stay updated on when these will become available.

Sixth Floor Oyster Cake’s hockey puck-sized fritters are taller and narrower than your average flying saucer specimen, due to the ladle Wai Yeen uses.

The second key difference comes from the stall’s savoury batter, made from three types of flour that the hawker keeps close to his chest. It’s spiked with salt and chicken seasoning powder for extra oomph. The resulting dough boasts an assertive crunch with more heft than the thinnish crispy overcoats of other oyster puffs we’ve had. The customary peanuts sprinkled on top add a further layer of nutty crunch too. Very shiok.

Each puff is generously packed with small but plump oysters from China, minced pork, whole shrimp and chives. The ingredients are amply moist and generous enough that it doesn’t feel like we’re eating air or plain (though delicious) dough. Very well-balanced.

Instead of the usual tangy, vinegar-laced chilli dip you’d get at most oyster puff joints, they’ve adapted a “chicken rice chilli recipe” proffered to them by a happy customer in their HBB days. Expect a gingery, garlicky mix that’s middle of the road in terms of spice level to go with your oyster puffs – refreshing, but unorthodox. We dig it.

Their fusion version, popular in their HBB days, is a somewhat happy marriage of oyster, shrimp and kimchi from a supplier. It’s still wonderfully crispy on the outside and chewy within, but the briny flavour of the oyster almost completely disappears amid the sour tang of the spicy fermented veg. We’d stick with the yummy original any day – though kimchi fiends probably won’t be disappointed by this.

Note that this variation isn’t currently on the menu, and will be added once the duo has solved their manpower woes.

Despite its humble HBB roots, Sixth Floor Oyster Cake serves one of the best oyster cakes we’ve tried — super crunchy on the outside, chewy within, packed with savoury, juicy oysters and more. Our only grouse is that the fritter seems a little small for $3 – we finished ours in a couple of bites. But not that most people mind, judging from the queues at the kiosk. Tip: pop by in the morning for a shorter wait.

Sixth Floor Oyster Cake is at #02-41, Northshore Plaza I, 407 Northshore Dr, S820407. Tel: 8811-0241. Open daily 10am - 3pm; 5pm - 9pm. More info via Facebook.

Photos: Aik Chen

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