Meet the Singaporeans bringing char kway teow to Mumbai

New Paper

9 hours ago

One runs a supper club that evokes memories of home-cooked flavours, and the other is billed as the city's first Singaporean street food restaurant.
For these two chefs abroad, food is a way to stay connected to their Singaporean identity.
Supper club dishes out Singaporean flavours with Indian produce
At Mumbai's southernmost tip, crowds gather for a breeze in the thickening heat. Beyond the storied silhouettes of the Gateway of India historical monument and The Taj Mahal Palace luxury hotel, colonial facades stand cheek by jowl with sleek restaurants along buzzing streets. This is Colaba - an island-turned-peninsula - dangling like a charm off the city's chaotic necklace, reaching into the Arabian Sea.
Singaporean Renjie Wong opens his apartment in Mumbai once a month for his by-invitation-only supper club, Salon Colaba. PHOTO: RENJIE WONG
In the heart of this neighbourhood, Singaporean Renjie Wong opens his apartment once a month for his by-invitation-only supper club, Salon Colaba.
A red pineapple lantern glows at the entrance. Inside, the lofty living room is a collage of curiosities from his travels: snakeskin from coastal destination Goa coiled along a driftwood branch, Japanese scripture scrawled on paper, a traditional woven raincoat from north-eastern state Arunachal Pradesh crowning the back of a chair. His decor, like his cooking, is a vivid extension of himself.
"Indians and Singaporeans are among the most homesick people in the world, at least when it comes to food," says the 34-year-old Singapore Tourism Board (STB) area director of India and South Asia (Mumbai).
"Growing up in Singapore, you take good food for granted because it's everywhere. When we're eating lunch, we're already thinking about what to have for dinner."
That appetite drove him first as an eater, and later as a cook.
He began honing his skills as an undergraduate in San Francisco, while pursuing a double major in anthropology and Italian literature at Stanford University.
"Cooking was a comforting way to deal with homesickness. No matter where I go, my food is tied to my Singaporean roots," he says.
Growing up in Singapore, his parents ruled the kitchen, so he rarely cooked. It was not until he moved abroad to study that he began making meals for himself, and fell in love with cooking.
For his dissertation research, he spent three summers in Naples, learning to make pasta and sugo (an Italian tomato sauce) from scratch in the Italian city.
He describes his culinary style as improvised - a riff on comforting flavours, shaped by global influences and whatever happens to be in the pantry and at seasonal markets.
His slow-cooked broths draw out the flavours of the ingredients, much like the rich Cantonese soups he grew up on, he says.
The pasta he serves in India, for instance, bears traces of home. Fermented black bean paste, dried scallops and fried shallots are echoes of his family's kitchen, reborn abroad.
From pasta kits to supper clubs
Mr Wong was working for STB in the United States when the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020, and he moved back to Singapore temporarily while working remotely for the statutory board.
During that time, he launched Pasta Singapura, selling meal kits of fresh handmade pasta and sauces to raise funds for Myanmar-based non-profit Doh Eain, which focuses on urban regeneration and heritage conservation.
Amid the pandemic, the organisation pivoted to offering critical daily support to hard-hit communities in downtown Yangon.
When restrictions eased in late 2020, he hosted a seven-course tasting menu built around the single ingredient of fish sauce, from his serviced apartment in Singapore.
It was his first experience running a supper club for friends and acquaintances he had met online - and the precursor to Salon Colaba.
After returning to the US in late 2021 to work in STB's California office, he launched his maiden supper club, Salon San Francisco, to welcome close friends.
Inspired by 19th-century European salons, he hosted meals for around six people every fortnight, envisioning a space where people gathered to share ideas, challenge perspectives and connect. He continued to channel proceeds to Doh Eain.
In 2022, when he moved to Mumbai to take up his current role, Salon Colaba was born.
A meal comprises six to eight courses, with three to five alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. It opens with a seafood oolong brew: a cold umami mixture of charred jawla (dried Konkani shrimp), anchovies, cuttlefish and scallop, steeped with oolong tea and aged tangerine peel. Snow fungus lends a silken, gelatinous texture.
Seafood oolong brew. PHOTO: RENJIE WONG
Crudites with sambal. PHOTO: RENJIE WONG
With the crudites of Totapuri mango slices and picador chillies come two sambals - one with dried shrimp, balado-style, cooked down with red chillies, wild desi tomato and fried jawla; the other raw and punchy, made from charred bombil (a type of fish also known as Bombay duck) that is lacto-fermented for six weeks with yellow chillies, Tripura pineapple and aromatics, then hand-pounded into a rich, layered paste.
Mee suah kueh. PHOTO: RENJIE WONG
The mee suah kueh, made from heritage Fuzhou noodles hand-pulled in Sarawak, is rare even in Singapore. Wong serves it with a shallot-rich curry built on a robust rempah, the crisp alliums adding earthy depth.
Ulam thunder tea. PHOTO: RENJIE WONG
Then comes the show-stealer: ulam thunder tea, a broth entwined in South-east Asian and Hakka traditions, made with 14 aromatic greens from Colaba Market - among them methi (fenugreek leaves), bathua (wild spinach), khatta bhaji (Indian sorrel), kulfa saag (purslane), gondhoraj lime leaf and sawtooth coriander. It fuses the spirit of ulam, the fragrant Malay herb salad, with the depth of Hakka thunder tea.
Between courses, conversation flows as easily as the drinks, which include fennel sugarcane wild soda and mulberry mint wild soda. Around six people attend each dinner. When I was there in March, the crowd was a mix of writers, creatives and food entrepreneurs.
Himalayan walnut soup. PHOTO: RENJIE WONG
Dessert crescendos with coral jelly in Himalayan walnut soup - a nod to Wong's visit to northern state Himachal Pradesh for the last walnut harvest in October 2024 - and slivers of preserved tangerine peel.
"My mother makes this for every family gathering," he says.
Sublime, nostalgic, quietly stunning - it is the perfect parting note.
Meals cost around 5,000 rupees (S$75) a person, with all proceeds going to charity. For more information, go to @saloncolaba on Instagram.
Beautician serves Singapore hawker favourites
In the Mumbai suburb of Bandra lies Makan Lah, billed as the city's first Singaporean street food joint. On its menu are familiar dishes including chicken rice, kaya toast and chendol.
Even before you enter, the aroma of freshly pulled kopi wafts from the kitchen, where Singaporean owner Synthia Liu, who is in her 40s, is at work.
Ms Synthia Liu is the founder of Makan Lah, which serves Singaporean street food in Mumbai. PHOTO: POOJA NAIK
"It has been my dream to bring Singapore street food to India," says Ms Liu, who spent 15 years in Mumbai as a beautician and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) therapist before her close friends, devoted fans of her home cooking, suggested she venture into the food and beverage industry.
She opened the cafe in the suburb of Khar in June 2024, before moving to its current location in July 2025.
Ms Liu first visited Mumbai in 2010 at the suggestion of a student from Hyderabad, who was enrolled in her beauty training programme in Singapore, where she taught nail and eyelash extensions.
Seeing potential in Mumbai's nascent hospitality industry, she began conducting beauty and wellness training programmes there, as well as in second-tier cities such as Coimbatore, Ahmedabad and Bhopal. By 2011, she had made Mumbai her home.
TCM diets inspire Singapore cooking
Ms Liu comes from a family of cooks. In Singapore, her uncle runs a hawker stall serving bak chor mee, while her mother has worked at various hawker stalls for the past three decades.
Ms Liu began cooking at age 10, taught by her vegetarian grandmother. Later, her mother taught her how to perfectly simmer hunks of chicken and fish in flavourful broths. In school, she favoured cooking classes.
In Mumbai, she found that planning diets for clients based on TCM philosophies played a key role in their treatment. The positive feedback she received inspired her to launch her food venture.
But it was not easy for a first-time eatery owner to build the business from scratch.
The exterior of Makan Lah. PHOTO: POOJA NAIK
The interior of Makan Lah. PHOTO: POOJA NAIK
Despite hiring chefs with experience in Chinese restaurants, Ms Liu says they did not know how to cook Singapore food. Many quit before the restaurant's launch.
Sourcing the right produce was a challenge, though she adapted - using, for instance, local chillies for chicken rice and native kolam rice for nasi lemak.
"Copying a recipe makes you a cook. Here, we're chefs, creating something unique with what we have, without compromising on quality," she says.
Social media proved a double-edged sword. A month after its launch, a popular food vlogger reviewed the restaurant online, and the video went viral - drawing large crowds it was not equipped to handle.
It took three months for Ms Liu and her team to find their rhythm.
Ms Liu says Makan Lah's extensive menu, with around 40 dishes, is like encountering a variety of hawker stalls at once.
Hainanese chicken rice. PHOTO: MAKAN LAH
As in Singapore, Hainanese chicken rice is a bestseller. The laksa is rich and aromatic with prawn broth and coconut milk, and the chicken gyoza and prawn har gow, served with garlic chilli oil and sambal, are delicate.
Nasi lemak, topped with anchovies, peanuts and egg, gets its kick from fiery sambal and comes with a choice of meat: chicken, pork or prawns. There is even a vegetarian char kway teow to suit local palates.
Laksa with prawns and chicken. PHOTO: MAKAN LAH
And the beverage menu brims with variations of kopi, alongside bubble teas and soothing herbal infusions.
Ms Liu has many plans in the pipeline. She intends to launch a brand selling Chinese tea and sauces, a pan-Asian eatery, Makan Lah's second outpost in the commercial suburb Lower Parel, and DIY cooking kits.
She also wants to open a cooking academy to teach people to cook Singapore food, as well as support young entrepreneurs who want to set up their own brand or restaurant.
Ms Liu says: "India is growing fast and there are far more opportunities for foreigners now than there were a decade ago. Indians are eager to learn. That makes a big difference."
Meals cost around 500 rupees a person. For more information, go to @makanlah.in on Instagram.