She left a Michelin restaurant to open a shrimp noodle hawker stall

• Gwyneth Ang landed her first job at Burnt Ends, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Singapore.
• She then opened a hawker stall selling shrimp noodles, which later grew into a casual eatery.
• Now Ang has opened a modern Asian seafood restaurant in a trendy new shopping center.

Things come full circle for Gwyneth Ang, 30, as she sits on a bar stool in front of the open kitchen of her new restaurant.

She started as an intern at a Michelin-starred restaurant, shadowing chefs and taking notes.

Now she leads a team of five chefs in her own restaurant.

One Prawn & Co is an 80-seat restaurant in New Bahru, a trendy new shopping center in Singapore built in a former high school. The restaurant has a modern feel with whitewashed walls, metallic blue tiles on the back wall of the open kitchen and hanging lamps that provide cool mood lighting.

Ang recalls that almost a decade ago, as a final year student at the Culinary Institute of America in Singapore, he needed to find something A Restaurant for her internship. When Dave Pynt, the chef and owner of Australian-inspired barbecue restaurant Burnt Ends, visited her school for a guest lecture on wood-fire cooking, she was intrigued.

“I felt like if there was one skill I wanted to learn, it was definitely wood fire cooking,” Ang told BI.

She hasn’t applied anywhere else. “I knew I wanted it,” she said. “So I went and got it.”

When she graduated later that year, she continued to work under Pynt. Burnt Ends is based in Singapore and has one Michelin star. In March, it was ranked 15th on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list and 68th on the global list.

She worked her way up from intern to manager of the wood stove.

But after working in a gourmet kitchen for two years, Ang was ready to move on.

Shifting focus to local cuisine

As a Singaporean, Ang has always been proud in the country’s local food culture. However, she felt that shrimp noodles – a dish that can be served dry or with soup – was one of them could be improved. She decided to develop and sell her own version based on the way she prepared it at home.

She knew she had to start small. A hawker stall seemed like the perfect sandbox to test out their ideas without spending much on overhead costs.

She entered into a partnership with a friend she had met in Burnt Ends in 2019 to open a hawker stall. They invested 60,000 Singapore dollars, or around $47,000, in the company. Ang did not share her partner’s name with Business Insider.

It was a huge change from the restaurant scene to a street food stall. But despite the long hours, cramped working conditions and low profits, Ang always remembered something she was once told: “If you can survive in Burnt Ends, you can survive anywhere.”

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“The training was very intense. You learn to understand heat and fire in the most primitive way,” she said.

The challenges of running a hawker business

Three years later, the street vendor stall was successful has just managed to recover its capital.

“I had to move out of hawker because there was a price cap,” said Ang. In Singapore, the average price of noodle dishes at hawker centers is between about SG$3 and SG$5, data from the Ministry of Statistics in Singapore shows.

She struggled with expectations as ingredient prices rose that local food should cost less than 6 Singapore dollars. “The store was too small to contain our ambition.”

So in 2021, she expanded into a full-service open-air restaurant, initially called One Prawn & Co and later renamed Zhup Zhup.

Leaving the hawker center is permitted The aim is to serve dishes at a slightly higher price.

Not only do they sell local dishes like Hokkien Mee and Pao Fan, but they also serve prawn noodles at SG$14 per bowl and SG$20 for their Supreme Prawn Noodle, which is served with pork ribs, tobiko prawn balls, mussels and pork slices.

Typically, shrimp noodles consist of a clear pork-based soup. Ang’s noodle broth is made from nearly 40 pounds of shrimp heads and over 60 pounds of pork bones, then simmered for more than 20 hours. The dish is served in a clay pot.

“The broth is so umami,” Darren Ang, a customer in his late 30s, told BI. What sets their shrimp noodles apart is the variety of ingredients, he said.

In 2022, the casual eatery received its first Michelin Bib Gourmand, a rating that recognizes establishments that offer high-quality food at lower prices.

Back to the restaurant scene

Early last year, Lo & Behold Group, a hotel group in Singapore, offered this to its team Opportunity to open a restaurant in the new shopping center.

Every tenant at New Bahru is an independent local brand. A representative for Lo & Behold Group declined to comment to BI on how Ang was selected.

Returning to a restaurant kitchen after nearly six years in a casual setting, Ang said the biggest difference was finally using chef terms like “emulsification” and “caramelization.”

“I can finally talk like that!” she said, laughing.

But most of all, Ang is looking forward to creating new dishes. The restaurant serves modern Asian grilled seafood in the evenings and shrimp broth ramen during the day, she said. As a reminder of their Burnt Ends days, the seafood is grilled or baked in a wood-fired oven.

Ang credits her ability to develop recipes She received training from Pynt.

Pynt told BI that Ang was a headstrong chef with great talent.

“She had very high standards that she was able to keep,” he said. He had mixed feelings as he watched her leave. “With good people, you always want them to stay,” he said.

“But on the other hand, you also want young chefs to spread their wings,” he said.

Inspiration for the next generation of street vendors

It’s not easy to be successful in Singapore’s food and beverage industry.

Teo Kay Key, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of Policy Studies, told BI that hawker food has traditionally been viewed as a cheap source of good, hearty meals that are affordable to the masses.

However, this can impact stallholders who must balance rising operating costs with customer expectations in order to make a living.

“Consumers may not want to purchase in the first place if they do not believe the price is appropriate based on their own assessment,” she said.

As a former young street vendor who defied these expectations, Ang hopes that young entrepreneurs – especially street vendors – follow her example.

And she’s in good company: Cherry Tan, 29, gave up her dream job as a flight attendant for Singapore Airlines to set up a street vendor with her husband selling Taiwanese-style teppanyaki.

She estimates that as a street vendor she took a 50% pay cut and had to work longer hours. Still, she believes it was worth it. “The street hawker lifestyle is challenging, but I think if more youth are willing to go through this process, it will be worthwhile,” she told BI.

Likewise, Shanice Lim left the gourmet scene at the age of 25 to run a street food stall. “The street vendor culture is dying. I wanted to spread my brand so that everyone can have good nasi lemak,” Lim told BI.

Although she charges a minimum of SG$5 for her dish, which can cost as little as SG$3 at other stalls, Lim said she has won over skeptical customers.

Ang agreed that young street vendors should not give up their pursuit of quality and charge reasonable prices.

“And feed yourself. They don’t do charity,” she added. “There will always be people who appreciate the quality of your food.”

Her next goal is to “reach for the stars.” In her case, the coveted Michelin stars.

“It will definitely be an honor to receive an award from Michelin,” she said. “But we will continue to do our best.”