Man Who Won $1Mil Toto Prize Years Ago Now A Char Siew Hawker

It seems to have paid off. Six months ago, he started his own rival roast meat brand — dubbed Char Siu Lang — at a kopitiam a stone’s throw away from ABC Brickworks Food Centre, where there’s stiff competition in the form of fellow roast meats stall Fatty Cheong.

The punny name is hilarious for two reasons: Ivan is fond of the Hokkien phrase cha si lang, which roughly translates to, "annoying people to death”. He adds: “We also want to be known as the lang (people) to go to for char siew”.

"It's not like I have no more money left from my winnings. I chose to work in insurance back then [soon after winning at Toto], and I'm choosing to get up at 6am daily [as a hawker] now," says Ivan simply.

Stephanie (left in pic), now his wife, helps out almost daily between appointments as a full-time financial advisor while his business partner, Liu An Qi (who also works as a financial advisor), 33, does marketing for the stall. “It was my friends who tried my food and convinced me that I could start Char Siu Lang,” says Ivan.

“But I really have to thank my wife most of all. She’s super supportive. When I told her [about my plan to be a hawker], we had no arguments or anything, she just asked me to do what makes me happy,” he adds.

That said, it’s the young towkay himself who spent two years mastering the art of charcoal roasting meats during his apprenticeship at the Ang Mo Kio stall. At his own joint now, he starts work at 6.30am to fire up the coals and marinate the meats.

The roasting process is time-consuming — repeated applications of the sugar-rich syrup are needed to give the pork its rich caramelised char. The siew yoke (roasted pork) is no exception, as it takes about a full day to marinate in a savoury five-spice rub and dry out the skin.

“It’s tough. You don’t have as much time for yourself (compared to a desk job),” he says. “But it helps you treasure what you have. There’s still time for Netflix or dinner with my wife.”

But Ivan says he has no regrets picking the hawker life over a corporate one. “There’s a lot more job satisfaction, and I’m able to pursue my passion.”

The biggest challenge was finding a location, says Ivan. It took around “six months of searching on his off-days” before he found a suitable place – which came from a tip-off via his father.

“When he told me it was near ABC Market, I knew it would be a challenge. But I’m confident of our food – we wouldn’t serve anything that we didn’t think was good,” he says. Together, he and An Qi invested around $60K into the business.

However, Ivan isn’t worried about making it back. “There’s a huge opportunity to grow,” he says. “There’s a lot of demand for good char siew.”

He says business has been steadily improving after a relatively quiet start. In fact, he adds that overall orders have increased after the no dine-in measures for Phase 2 (HA) kicked in recently, though he attributes that to a steady marketing campaign on social media instead of anything else.

There’s a trio of roast meats available – roast pork, char siew, and roast chicken. For carbs, there’s Hakka noodles and seasoned rice, instead of just plain rice common in roasted meat stalls. It costs $4 for rice and one protein, $5 for two, and $7 for all three. Meat on its own goes by weight - for reference, what’s pictured here is around 100g ($5) per portion of meat. Note that you get to pick your poison in terms of the fattiness of the pork you’re getting — just tell Ivan, as he’s the one doing the chopping.

If you’re naming your joint after a single item on your menu, you’d better be pretty confident about what you’re serving. In Char Siu Lang’s case, their confidence isn’t unfounded. The edges of this roasted number are sweet-savoury with delightful crispy bits. The interior is succulent and very toothsome. The use of pork belly instead of pork shoulder or bu jian tian (pig’s armpit) results in char siew that’s far more yielding to the teeth (and also far more sinful). While we did opt for the fatty cut of char siew, we found that the leaner bit at the end fared well too.

You get a little saucer of that char siew glaze (made with ingredients like shaoxing wine and sugar) with each order – which is a lot more savoury than sweet — we like. We find that savouriness pairs better with fatty meat than uber-sweet sauces you’d get at some places, including Fatty Cheong next door.

If we have one grouse it’s this: we wish the charred bits were a bit crispier.

This roast pork looks gorgeous. It’s uniformly golden-brown with nary a blemish. That translates texturally to a resoundingly crunchy roast. The five-spice flavour that tends to come in on the underside of the roast pork doesn’t overwhelm. Juicy, crisp-skinned and delish.

After all that stellar pork, the humble roast chicken falls a little flat. The fat under the skin has rendered enough to crisp up the skin decently, and the meat beneath is tender. It’s not bad, just not as exceptional as the pork.

We’re glad the towkay opted for chicken rice instead of plain rice. It’s no slouch either – the grains aren’t clumped up, and the fragrance of the chicken fat and pandan shines through. Tastewise, it pairs well with the glaze from the char siew and all that meat. Not so good — the spicy chili, which is a little too vinegar-forward. The sourness hits you right away, which might put off some people.

Hakka mee isn’t a dish you’d find in Singapore as easily as you’d find in Malaysia. In fact, it’s even rarer to find it as a pairing to Cantonese-style roast meats.

Mee kia is tossed in a simple minced pork-and-garlic sauce laced with plenty of lard. While tasty on its own, we don’t see this pairing as well with the meats, especially the sauce-laden char siew.

As for the soup, you’d usually be lucky to get a bowl of warm, MSG-laden water at roast meat hawker stalls. In Char Siu Lang’s case, they’ve opted to shell out a little extra for radish, onion, cabbage and pork chunks, which gives it some sweet oomph. It’s a touch we appreciate.

Good KL-style char siew, from a reasonable $4 a plate. There’s not much of a queue here for now, so head down to tapow in safe-distanced comfort while you can.

Char Siu Lang is at #01-5134, Blk 2, Jln Bukit Merah, S150002. Open daily except Wed 11am – 6.30pm or till sold out. Available for delivery too. More details on Facebook and Instagram.

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Photos: Alvin Teo, Char Siu Lang