Claws for concern
By Theodore Lim
Chilli crab is a cornerstone of local cuisine and an international icon — but nobody wants to cook it. Recent laws cracking down on foreign chefs could prove to be one of the greatest threats to the dish yet.
Chef Tan Chen Hui tosses a kilogramme of mud crab in a wok drenched with sambal-laden gravy, his face gleaming in the light of flames spewing from a Chinese-style open-fire stove.
Chef Tan Chen Hui, who has been with Home of Seafood for over seven months, only has a day off each week. His busy schedule, he admits, makes maintaining a social life difficult.
Standing shoulder to shoulder with two other chefs in the heat of a cramped kitchen, the 30-year-old dishes out back-to-back orders that seem to pour in non-stop.
After a week of 10-hour shifts, the tiny team of six chefs at the Home of Seafood restaurant would have served over 120kg of crab.
Conditions in Chinese open-fire kitchens across the nation are harsh. Long shifts are spent in the heat. No breaks, cramped spaces, and a constant pressure to deliver.
This has contributed to the high-stress environment of zi char-style kitchen — which locals seem to shun.
The cramped nature and oppressive heat of an open-fire kitchen remains intimidating to most aspiring local chefs. Small kitchen teams also mean that chefs work lengthy shifts with little chance of a break during meal service.
“It’s not a very nice place to work in. It’s hot. You get burned. The hours are long, and we work six days a week,” says Mr Teh Tiam Peng, 41, who heads Made in Orient’s kitchen in Chef Avenue.
“For a kitchen this size in Malaysia, we have 17 or 18 chefs,” says Mr Tan, who is from Kuala Lumpur.
“Here, it’s just six people.” He leans back in his chair during the short break between Home of Seafood’s lunch and dinner services, absently rubbing at the dark shadows under his eyes.
The team is at risk of shrinking, as Home of Seafood and many other restaurants struggle to retain their manpower.
Shifts in the industry over the past decade have resulted in a legion of Malaysian chefs being all that stands between iconic dishes like chilli crab, and extinction.
“In Singapore, 90 percent of zi char restaurants are helmed by Malaysians,” says Mr Tony Tee, a food curator and consultant.
“If they leave, that’s it.”
The government took on measures to wean the local service industry off this heavy reliance on foreign hires. However, this catalysed a major labour crunch in the food-and-beverage sector.
The first of the cuts to the Dependency Ratio Ceiling (DRC) came into effect at the turn of the New Year. Announced in the 2019 Budget, these cuts reduced the number of foreign workers that can be employed by a business.
“Even if you have the money to get the right people, the government doesn't allow you,” laments Mr Mohammed Borhan, the owner of Home of Seafood.
The service sector quota cuts have put his family business in peril, he says. The 40-year-old had plans to expand his business, but now faces difficulties in finding Singaporeans to employ in order to meet the new quotas.
Stepping Up
Malaysian chefs have been the unsung heroes in Chinese kitchens for decades in the Republic. Most cross the causeway partly out of passion, and partly out of necessity.
“Just like some people are interested in becoming artists, I was interested in becoming a chef,” says Mr Tan Chen Hui, who came to Singapore six years ago in search of a job.
Unlike the average Singaporean, who cannot handle the stressful and intimidating conditions in Chinese open-fire kitchens, Mr Tan claims that Malaysians are more tenacious.
“In every street and every corner, all the food stores and restaurants, the chefs are mainly Malaysians.”
Mr Tan is one of many who have crossed the border in search of work, and stayed on for the higher pay.
Mr Teh Tiam Peng, 41, is a Singapore permanent resident, but maintains that staying across the causeway in Johor is cheaper. The chef commutes to his workplace in Tai Seng by motorcycle daily.
“It’s the exchange rate,” says Mr Teh in Mandarin. “We make about the same amount in ringgit in Malaysia, so it really just makes sense for us to come over and earn money.”
Despite unfamiliar surroundings and small living spaces, most Malaysian chefs are unwilling to return home.
The paycheck makes it worthwhile, says Mr Tan. “If we can make the same amount back home, I wouldn’t be here.”
However, the allure of money is not the only thing keeping them in kitchens here.
Longer stints give them the resources to hone their craft — allowing them to innovate and develop flavors that local diners lap up.
Mr Teh credits his current chilli crab recipe to his personal experiments at work, having tweaked it over his years working in Singapore's F&B industry.
At Chef Avenue, a fast casual hawker concept, there are many avenues for innovation in the kitchen, its managing director Kelvin Neo, 54, says.
Prior to Mr Teh’s current stint at Chef Avenue, the veteran chef spent more than half a decade at another seafood joint, House of Seafood. As he describes how he helmed the refining of crowd favorites like salted egg crab, his eyes glitter with pride.
No two chili crab recipes are the same. Mr Teh’s iteration has a more assertive kick of garlic and spice compared to the sweeter, tamer versions found in other seafood restaurant chains.
“My boss tasted the dish overseas, and when he asked me if I knew how to replicate it, I tried different methods. Eventually, he put it on the menu.”
The freedom to innovate and a better pay have seen chefs spending their whole careers — for some, their whole lives — in Singapore.
No New Blood, No Local Talent
In contrast to the large number of Malaysian chefs in the industry, there remains a lack of new local talent in kitchens.
“A lot of Singaporeans don’t want to be here. They find it tough. They’re educated and can find easier work elsewhere,” says Mr Teh.
The Malaysian chef has spent the past 17 years working end-to-end meal services in a blazing hot kitchen, whipping up chilli crab and fried rice for five hours at a stretch.
Mud crabs have to be killed just before cooking, and the difficulty in that could further turn inexperienced chefs off.
“Singaporeans don’t wish to work. Our Singaporeans are part-time servers, but no one wants to be in the kitchen,” says Mdm Ma Nu Yin, 47, manager at No Signboard Seafood.
Furthermore, young culinary professionals here are also avoiding traditional Chinese kitchens in favour of Western ones, due to a global perception of Chinese chefs being less prestigious than Western ones.
“It’s an open secret,” says Mr David Yip, local food consultant and chef.
“People in the West always associate Chinese food with those takeaway places; those cheap eateries and lousy Chinese restaurants that serve chop suey.”
Mr Yip also speculated that a shift in mindset amongst young chefs is another deterrent for potential new talent entering the scene.
“Nowadays, when young chefs join kitchens, their starting mentality is very different. They want to be famous.”
“Advancement is a lot slower in Chinese kitchens,” says Mr Joseph Ong, a 29-year-old ex-chef de partie at Terra, a Japanese-Italian restaurant.
“To make the wok station in a Chinese place might take the same amount of time for a western-trained chef to make head chef.”
Moreover, new recruits in most zi char kitchens have a language barrier to overcome, with instructions meted out in dialects like Cantonese and Hokkien.
The lack of local talent, coupled with restricted hires of foreign chefs, ring warning bells for the future of labour-intensive dishes.
Chilli crab is not spared.
In Singapore, 90 percent of zi char restaurants are helmed by Malaysians.
If they leave, that's it.
“Preparing crab requires too much manpower,” says Mr Seth Sim, the 30-year-old director of Da Shi Jia, a seafood restaurant group.
“You need one person to kill the crab, another to cook it, and a third to plate it.”
According to the second-generation hawker, his business had been greatly affected by the employment quota changes in the last decade.
While he concedes that it was partly due to his inexperience in management, difficulty in hiring staff added to his difficulties and made them harder to manage. Since inheriting the business from his father, he has scaled down and shuttered most of his labour-intensive
zi char restaurants, leaving only four in operation.
Now, he has pivoted the Da Shi Jia brand to specialise in prawn noodles instead.
Eye of the Storm
While a dark cloud of unease still hangs over many zi char kitchens, the foreign cooks whose jobs hang in the balance seem unperturbed.
The burden falls more upon employers to retain their staff, says Mr Tan.
The chef adds that Facebook pages and Whatsapp groups for Malaysian culinary practitioners still teem with job postings for all kinds of vacant kitchen positions, both here and across the causeway.
Recommendations by fellow chefs for new kitchen jobs — the main way most veteran Malaysian chefs find work here — are also plentiful, adds fellow chef Mr Teh.
In contrast, business owners are particularly stressed out about the new laws in place — with business owners such as Mr Borhan and Roland Restaurant’s manager Diana Lim all expressing major concerns about the new quotas when discussing the future of their restaurants.
“To find a job as a chef in Singapore is not difficult, as long as you’re not picky,” says Mr Tan, who also waved aside worries about his future employment being strangled by legislation.
"A country will always need its cooks," he says.