Japanese Restaurant Owner Who Lost $100K In Biz Becomes Curry Rice Hawker

Located at Chinatown Complex Food Centre, Jiakali, which means “eat curry” in Hokkien, stands out with its funky signboard. The curry rice stall opened on 18 July 2023 with a simple menu, serving chicken, mutton, pork rib and chicken cutlet Indian-inspired curry with bread or rice.

No part of this story or photos can be reproduced without permission from 8days.sg.

The stall is single-handedly run by Larine Goh, 39, who tells 8days.sg that she “does everything, reaching [the stall] around 6am” and only leaving at 9pm. The first-time hawker used to own a casual Japanese fusion restaurant called Oh! My Bento Booze at Kovan, which she ran for five years before closing it down last December.

Larine shut down her restaurant due to “increasing rental, manpower and cost [issues]”, which caused her to lose over $100K in her final year of operations. Despite the steep losses and punishing schedule, she chose to stay in F&B and became a hawker, which arguably requires more hard work as a one-woman show. “Many people ask me why [I became a hawker], but I still like the food industry — it’s my passion”. She invested about $20K into opening Jiakali. Why sell curry instead of sticking to Japanese food? She reasons, “Japanese food is quite readily available these days, so there’s no point fighting the giants”.