At 15,
Chan Kim Ho was faced with a decision that would change his life forever: take
over the family business, his father told him and his kid brother…or I will
close it down. While his brother opted to continue his education, eventually
becoming an academician at the local university, Mr Chan left school and took
over the Poh Guan Cake House.
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| Freshly-baked Teochew pastries available everyday in the shop. |
When he
decided to step in, the enterprise was already old, founded almost 30 years
earlier, in 1930, with just three products to sell -- peanut candy, red bean
cakes, and lotus cakes. These were originally snack specialties of Hokkien
province in China; their tastiness made them popular in Singapore, but they
were also must-serves at weddings. When he took over the shop in 1958, Mr Chan
had to work 16-hour days aided by a single helper. But business grew and he
began distributing to provision shops and coffee shops.
His
products became a common sight in the coffee shops of the 1960s and 70s. His
peanut candies, especially, would fill large glass jars that lined the
cashier’s counter; however, Mr Chan also witnessed the steady decline of
Chinese pastry making. The introduction of western cakes and pastries hurt the
traditional industry deeply. In the face of faltering demand and competition
for a shrinking pie, Mr Chan decided to learn the preparation of bean paste
fillings under two masters of the craft.
Poh
Guan successfully grew after this astute move, and today employs a staff of
about a dozen in the production end of the business. Despite this, the boss
insists that no other person but himself should make the cake fillings.
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| Mr. Chan still cooks the fillings for all his pastries personally. |
Mr Chan
proudly tells us that while the ingredients might be few and simple – beans,
sugar, and lard; to achieve consistency of the mix, and timing in the addition
of each ingredient, is a hard-won skill. The final bean paste should be moist,
sweet, and meltingly smooth.
What’s
heartening to this 68-year-old doyen of Chinese pastry making, however, is the
revival among the young of giving out traditional Chinese cakes at weddings.
This has an advantage, Mr Chan says with a twinkle in his eye, because Chinese
cakes last longer, unlike the western ones that require refrigeration and have
a short shelf life.
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| A rare treat: pepperweed kueh made with a hard-to-find herb from China. |
While
ever the traditionalist, Mr Chan also seeks to make the old, new again. From
time to time, he introduces traditional cakes with newly concocted fillings
such as durian, green tea, pineapple, and yam. One of the company’s creations
is a cake made from a Chinese herb – or weed, as he puts it. His sister who
lives in China would harvest, wash, air, and sun dry the herb, and Mr Chan
would bring it back to Singapore.
The
cakes thus produced are only sold at Poh Guan, while the same cakes produced by
his competitors, he whispers conspiratorially -- have the “weed” replaced with
pepper! Apparently, this special herb also has medicinal benefits as a
detoxification agent, remover of dark spots on skin, and eliminator of gray
hair.
Poh
Guan Cake House
Blk 531
Upper Cross Street #01-57
Singapore
050531
Tel:
6534 0136