Good night, sweet Prince: The future of Hainanese-Western food in Singapore

SINGAPORE – Come mid-2026, Prince Coffee House will be no more. This Hainanese institution has stood for 50 years, first at Shaw Towers, then at Coronation Plaza in Bukit Timah.

Its final stop will likely be its current location in Beach Road, unless someone swoops in to take over the business. That is still the hope of owner Jimmy Lim, in his 80s, who has spent his entire adult life running the restaurant. 

But regardless of whether a buyer materialises, he tells The Straits Times it is time for him to retire, adding that the restaurant’s future is stymied by the next generation’s lack of interest in the business. 

His is not the only restaurant serving the Hainanese-Western fusion that embodies the syncretic nature of Singaporean cuisine. Time-honoured dishes like oxtail stew and deep-fried pork chop with a tangy, tomato-based sauce abound at restaurants like British Hainan and Mariners’ Corner Restaurant.

Like Prince Coffee House, however, many of these institutions are dependent on the passions and abilities of a few ageing Hainanese. Some are family-run, which postpones but does not resolve the question of continuity. 

In an ever-competitive industry where newness is virality and virality business, how do these relics of Singapore’s history hang on to their spot in the culinary landscape? And what does the future hold for them? 

A slice of history  

Though only the fifth-largest Chinese dialect group in Singapore according to the 2020 population census, the Hainanese have an outsized impact on the food scene here, responsible for local icons like chicken rice, kaya toast and Western-stall staples of breaded fish and chicken chop in brown sauce. 

Ask any Hainanese chef and this is the story they will recount. The Hainanese arrived in Singapore far later than the other Chinese dialect groups and found themselves crowded out of jobs in agriculture, commerce and trade. Hampered by their niche dialect, lower social status and limited numbers, they had to settle for service work. Many became cooks and servants in hotels, restaurants or wealthy European and Peranakan households. 

They learnt to whip up oxtail stew and use HP sauce from the British, and doled these out to the masses through coffee houses and kopitiams set up in the mid-20th century. Over time, these recipes were tweaked in tandem with local tastes – tanginess was added in the form of ketchup, saltiness moderated and funk toned down. 

Take the borscht at Shashlik Restaurant, for instance. The 40-year-old restaurant at Far East Shopping Centre serves Russian food with a Hainanese twist, which means less beetroot and more tomato. 

“Traditional borscht tends to be more earthy, because it uses a lot of beetroot. But we know that Russian food might be a bit of an acquired taste for most people, so we balance that with tomatoes, cabbage and potatoes to give our borscht its unique flavour,” says co-owner Alan Tan, 54. 

He and his brother Derrick, the restaurant’s head chef, are the sons of one of Shashlik’s original co-founders – former head waiter Tan Niap Hin. The late Mr Tan and his eight colleagues had met while working at Troika Room White Bear, a restaurant in Bras Basah Road that shut in 1985 due to mounting debts. 

When opening the new restaurant in 1986, the team needed a name that signalled that the spirit of Troika lived on. So they borrowed from a dish that would be instantly recognisable to regulars – Troika’s signature beef skewers or shashlik. 

Over the years, the menu has evolved beyond Russian and Hainanese food. French crepes suzette were added to the repertoire, as well as British fish and chips and the American classic, baked Alaska.  

Indeed, so much has changed that neither Mr Alan Tan nor his oldest employee, an 85-year-old waiter known to regulars as Uncle Foo, remembers how the current iteration of the menu came to be. 

Mr Alan Tan and his brother took over the business in 2016, when the previous owners decided to retire and call it a day. “I used to help out here as a student, so I felt very sentimental about this place and decided to give it a new lease of life.” 

Mariners’ Corner Restaurant, located in Clementi, is also a family affair. Founded by Mr Raymond Say in 1984, the Hainanese-Western restaurant is now managed by his son, Jeremy, 41. Not that the 80-year-old has officially handed over the reins.

“Hainanese bosses never retire,” the younger Mr Say quips. 

According to the Says, it is this homely intimacy that sets their restaurant apart from the crop of new food and beverage (F&B) openings. A duelling-flintlock pistol that used to hang in Mr Jeremy Say’s old room joins his father’s collection of antiques on the restaurant’s walls, and each plate is cooked exactly to the customer’s liking. 

It would not work with someone else at the helm, insists Mr Raymond Say. Though he no longer cooks, he still eats oxtail stew there three to four times a week. “I can’t lose that taste. Customers come here for the oxtail stew, so I can’t allow it to change.” 

“With stews, how you cook is based on experience,” adds his son. “The recipe might call for 30kg of meat, but you won’t always get that amount, so you need to know how to adjust accordingly. And that’s where experience comes in. If you go and measure all the ingredients again from scratch, it’s going to take a very long time.” 

Likewise, walking into British Hainan is like stepping into the Puah family’s storeroom. Upon arrival, you are greeted by a Vespa, a gramophone and two life-size lion statues. Venture farther and you see the 1970s jukebox, still pumping out tunes by the likes of Simon & Garfunkel, Gary Moore and Pat Boone. Grab a table by the vintage jackpot machine or sit at the button-tufted leather booth behind the phonograph cabinet. 

At lunchtime, working adults stream into the 2,800 sq ft Kallang Way restaurant, which opened in 2018. Its spry 70-year-old owner Frederick Puah greets each one personally, showing them to a table tucked amid mounds of memorabilia. 

The restaurant’s familial touch extends to the service too. “As long as one family member is here, you get the level of hospitality we’re known for,” says his daughter, Ms Vanessa Puah, 40, who handles strategic development at British Hainan.

It can be difficult to hire staff with the same degree of passion for a business that is not theirs, as her family learnt when they expanded to Purvis Street in 2021. 

That outlet eventually shuttered in 2024 due to manpower issues.

“We got the wrong manager,” surmises Mr Puah.

Its original site at Joo Chiat, opened in 2013, also closed in 2025 because its building was being redeveloped. 

In any case, it might be better for the family to consolidate their efforts. Ms Puah’s hope is to sustain at least one flagship outlet that maintains the quality of food and warmth of hospitality her father so espouses, to ensure his legacy lives on. 

Evolving with the times

In the view of Mr Raymond Say, this sort of cooking is a dying art. With long hours and tedious labour – oxtail stew alone takes 15 hours to prepare, according to Mr Puah – it does not appeal much to a better-educated generation that esteems work-life balance and sexier, more contemporary cuisines. 

For now, Hainanese food shows no immediate signs of going the way of other regional varieties. Hakka dishes like abacus seeds, for one thing, are often considered more endangered.

But veteran food blogger Leslie Tay, who runs the ieatishootipost website and social media accounts, cautions that restaurateurs and chefs should not grow too complacent. In the current competitive F&B climate, it is not enough to rest on one’s laurels and let history do the talking. 

There is a reason, after all, so many coffee houses no longer exist. Their version of Western food might have cut it in the 1970s, but this is not necessarily the case today.

“Back then, it was the best we could find, but taste buds are more sophisticated now. And quite frankly, much of the food at places like Prince hasn’t really evolved,” says the 57-year-old. 

Same old cuts of meat, same boiled vegetables. He suggests mixing it up with fresh additions the younger crowd might appreciate – waffles, perhaps.

Kind of like what is being done to other Hainanese ubiquities like kaya toast and chicken rice. The bread sold at Hainanese-owned hawker chain Coffee Break, for instance, comes slathered in black sesame, earl grey creme or rum and raisin creme (all $3.50). Wash it down with a mulberry hojicha latte ($5.80) or some sea salt lemonade ($3.80). 

For this brand, which has been around since 1935 and has outlets in Holland Drive, Amoy Street and Market Street, this is what staying relevant in the 2020s looks like. Founded as a pushcart in Keppel by a Hainanese immigrant, it is run by his grandchildren Jack, Faye and Anna Sai, who took over from their father, Mr Sai Tok Tan, in 2012.

“We want to make sure that whenever you come to the stall, you won’t just get the same thing. Let’s say it’s a Friday and you feel like treating yourself to a different drink that will make you happy – that’s something we want to provide,” says Ms Faye Sai, 38. 

Though customers occasionally find buzzy items like strawberry matcha on the menu, Ms Sai says she and her siblings do not hop blindly onto bandwagons.

“We include what we’d like to drink as customers. We arrive at most of our flavours by trial and error, letting regulars try them first to see what they think. And if it’s good, it stays.” 

Sometimes, these fads do indeed attract new customers, who are drawn back to the stall by its cheaper selection of daily staples. The siblings make it a point to retain the traditional section of the menu – $1.90 kopi and teh, $3 kaya butter toast – so that there is something for everyone, from the young and adventurous to Pioneer Generation regulars. 

Also in the business of repackaging tradition is Mr Steven Foo, 53, the grandson of Mr Foo See Hing, who founded Yet Con Chicken Rice. The iconic eatery, famed for its steamboat chicken rice, closed after 80 years in 2020, when the circuit breaker hampered its economic viability.

But it might be coming back, if only in bits and pieces, tailored for modern living: Think chicken rice ready meals and bottled chilli sauce. 

Currently based in Britain, Mr Foo is working on an updated version of his family’s chilli sauce. It was once fermented in large, earthenware pots, mixed with vinegar and ginger, and preserved with a layer of salt. While he does not have access to such resources there, he has the original recipes, as well as relatives who still remember what the real thing tasted like. 

“We’re trying to maintain the sweetness of it, the punch of it. A lot of chillies in Europe are dried, so we’re trying to look for fresh chillies as well. We just want to see if this thing is scalable,” he says. 

He plans to launch the sauce in Britain in the next few months to feed the burgeoning demand there for Singaporean Chinese food.

Another modernised form of chicken rice is found at Seng House, a Hainanese-Western cafe in Tanjong Katong Road. Here, chicken rice ($19.80) is served in a claypot, its grains lightly charred. 

Owner Ms Hong Liya, 40, wanted to differentiate her chicken rice from the version sold in hawker centres. “I didn’t want to serve diners something they could find elsewhere. It had to be special, worth paying the price for,” she says.

Also on the menu is Hainanese pork chop ($23.80++), made with Hokkaido snow pork loin. The fattiness of the meat is tempered with a dose of vinegar in the sauce. Otherwise, it is cooked the traditional way, with cream cracker crumbs and green peas. 

Since Hainanese pork chop and oxtail stew (also on the menu at $29.80++) have never quite been hawker staples, she sees less need to jazz them up.

Old is gold

In some ways, Ms Hong adds, it is easier to reinvent a familiar classic like chicken rice than to put a spin on something less ubiquitous. 

Dr Lye Kit Ying, a senior lecturer at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, whose research interests include cultural heritage, says familiarity paves the way for experimentation.

“When snacks like kaya toast are reinvented or adapted, these changes are usually well received because the new ingredients and flavours complement or closely resemble what we already know.

“On the other hand, it is more difficult to reinvent less common dishes, since altering anything with strong emotional significance or comfort value for the older generation is often met with resistance.” 

It is for this reason that Mr Jeremy Say is apprehensive about making too many changes to the dishes at Mariners’ Corner Restaurant. In the 20 years since he first came on board, the menu has hardly changed.

“If we were to change the menu, then we wouldn’t be true to our heritage,” he says.  

He has tweaked only the sides, supplying variety in the form of coleslaw, buttered vegetables and sauteed vegetables. 

For the most part, sticking to their guns is an approach that has served them well. Footfall has remained stable over the Says’ 40 or so years in the business.

Mr Puah knows, too, that old-school whimsy is British Hainan’s selling point, and he wants to lean all the way in. His dream is to one day replicate the look and feel of colonial-era servants’ quarters, where Chinese, Malay and Indian household staff lived and worked together. 

“I know people have their reservations, but I’m very open. I think it’s a meaningful thing. This was racial harmony. And wouldn’t it be fun to revisit how we lived in those days?” he says. 

For now, though, he has resorted to subtler ways of standing out, veering between innovation and excavation. Hybrid inventions like Hainanese pasta in sweet and sour sauce co-exist here with vanishing specialities like mutton soup. 

“Over the course of our 13 years in business, we have found that the community that supports us the most is the Hainanese. They find great pride in how traditional dishes are presented in a restaurant setting, and have asked for more Hainanese dishes like herbal mutton soup, which is rarely cooked these days, even in Hainanese homes,” says Ms Puah. 

Sometimes, change is driven by necessity. At Shashlik, Mr Tan has had to trim the fat on occasion, booting certain dishes to the seasonal menu to optimise storage space. These are typically more obscure creations, like carpetbag steak, a grilled hunk of meat stuffed with oysters. 

In April, he also updated the restaurant’s set lunches, priced from $19.50++ to $24.50++. Pork ribs with basmati chicken rice have since joined the line-up, which includes modified classics such as Hainanese pork chop with chicken rice balls and hae bee hiam pasta. 

Future of Hainanese food

Their woes are the woes of restaurants all around Singapore: rising overheads, tighter spending. Also concerning to some is the arrival of mainland Chinese brands, with their own takes on regional Chinese food. 

In August 2025, VivoCity welcomed Mr Hainan, a restaurant purporting to serve “authentic” Hainanese cuisine.

Owner Dong Haideng, 50, says its intentions are clear: “To reconnect diners with the roots of Hainanese cuisine and present the dishes in a way that reflects the original culinary traditions of the island, while remaining relevant to the expectations of today’s diners.” 

Though the restaurant specialises in dishes like threadfin with black bean sauce and golden coconut pastry, it is not uncommon for diners to request dishes like Hainanese chicken rice or pork chop.

“While these dishes remain an important part of Singapore’s culinary history, Mr Hainan has chosen to focus on regional recipes that more closely reflect the culinary traditions of Hainan Island,” says Mr Dong, who is from Hainan. 

While Mr Puah wishes them all the best, he argues that the Singaporean version of Hainanese food is just as authentic, and hopes diners will not lose their craving for Hainanese-Western any time soon. 

Ms Hong, meanwhile, is optimistic. Her signature Hainanese dishes are popular with her main clientele of couples in their 30s and 40s with children.

“These dishes are warm and hearty. They’ve a straightforward flavour, so you know exactly what you’re getting.” 

In the words of Dr Tay, the closure of Prince Coffee House will not spell the end of Hainanese food in Singapore.

“It’s still alive and well,” he says. “Of course, it would be nice if the Prince were still around – but in a new, updated way.”