At £2.80 (S$5), a curry puff in London costs more than three times than one in Singapore, where a curry puff is S$1.50. However, it is also almost two times bigger, to cater to Western appetites.
Song Yeow Chung, Old Chang Kee’s chief financial officer, says that the price difference is also due to the cost of shipping the curry paste from Singapore, and high rental and labour costs in London. The 16-seat restaurant, which is located at 15A New Row, opened on 2 June. The shop is along a busy pedestrian walkway between Covent Garden and Leicester Square.
Despite the higher price, the shop has been selling the curry puffs faster than it can fry them. Song says that it has sold about 400 to 500 curry puffs daily since it opened, with Singaporeans and Malaysians making up 80% of customers.
Other hot favourites include the curry potato puff (£2.60), and chicken and mushroom puff (£2.80). There are also seasonal items such as chilli crab and black pepper tuna puffs.
Leong, director of Old Chang Kee UK, decided to bring the brand to the UK as she missed food from home. “The curry puff is Singapore’s version of the Cornish pasty,” she says. “Singapore was at a trading crossroads and was influenced by many cultures, from Chinese to Malay. Legend has it that the curry puff was invented by Hainanese chefs working for the British during Singapore’s colonial era. We’re very excited to bring it back to British shores.”
Besides curry puffs, dig into Singapore dishes from Old Chang Kee’s subsidiary brand, Curry Times. Dishes include chicken potato curry, mixed vegetable curry and dry chicken curry, which has cubes of chicken stir-fried in curry leaves and spices. Curry dishes, which are served with rice or baguette slices, start from £6.30 (S$11.20). Non-curry options, which are nonetheless still spicy, include nasi lemak and laksa.
To ensure that the taste of the food stays consistent, laksa and sambal pastes will be imported from Singapore and a team from Singapore will visit the London outpost every six months.
In the pipeline are more outlets in London and expanding the menu to include non-spicy main dishes. Old Chang Kee’s London outlet opened a month after the chain opened its Singapore flagship shop near Rex Cinema, where it started out as a humble curry puff stall in 1956.
It was bought by Han Keen Juan in 1986, who has since grown it to more than 100 outlets in Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. In Perth, a signature curry puff costs AUD$3.30 (S$3.30). The chain sells more than 1.5 million curry puffs a month globally.
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