Dining · 18 June 20264 min read
Kim Choo Kueh Chang and the Peranakan Heritage of Joo Chiat
Eighty years on, the third generation of a Katong dumpling family is turning a wartime survival trade into a living archive of Peranakan culinary culture.
For residents and long-stay visitors trying to read the cultural grain of Singapore's east coast, few addresses tell the story as densely as Joo Chiat Place. The shophouse strip running between Katong and the sea has long been the heartland of Peranakan Singapore, and at number 60 sits Kim Choo Kueh Chang, a rice dumpling specialist whose history runs parallel to the neighbourhood's own transformation from postwar trading quarter to conservation district.
The business is now run by Edmond Wong, the third generation of his family to take it on. Its origins reach back to the early 1940s, when his great-great-grandmother began selling food to neighbours. After the Second World War, his grandmother, Madam Lee Kim Choo, joined the trade, selling rice dumplings, economy rice and Nyonya kueh under a banyan tree. In Wong's telling, the enterprise was never conceived as a profit-making venture. It was a survival strategy in a city stripped of resources, where banks barely functioned and small traders had to borrow from loan sharks to keep stock on the table.
What sustained the stall was the quality of the zongzi. Regulars eventually persuaded Madam Lee to drop the rice and kueh and focus on the dumplings she made best. The brick-and-mortar move came later, encouraged by the late politician Dr Fong Kim Heng, who helped her secure a bank loan for a shop in Joo Chiat. That shophouse is still the anchor of the business today, joined by a second outlet at 111 East Coast Road, both within walking distance of the Katong conservation area that has become one of Singapore's most sought-after neighbourhoods for heritage property buyers.
The shop's longevity owes much to its willingness to adapt. Wong notes that the menu has expanded in response to successive crises. When swine flu unsettled the pork market, the kitchen introduced chicken dumplings. When bird flu followed, vegetarian versions were added. The brand also claims to have been the first in Singapore to produce mini, bite-sized zongzi, and continues to experiment with new fillings, including a black truffle dumpling priced at 9.50 dollars during festive periods. Even outside the Dragon Boat Festival window, the kitchen turns out several thousand dumplings on a typical day.
Manpower has been a harder problem to solve. Wong recalls 2009, when tighter quotas on foreign workers forced the family to let go of a substantial part of its staff. That moment pulled him out of a government career and into the business full time. His brothers, formerly a teacher and an accountant, had already stepped in during the swine flu crisis. The siblings now divide the work between production, digital operations and a broader cultural programme that includes traditional kebaya design sold through the visitor centre.
The distinction between Chinese bak chang and Nyonya kueh chang sits at the heart of what the shop is trying to preserve. The dumpling tradition arrived in the Malay Archipelago with Chinese immigrants observing the Dragon Boat Festival, then took on local ingredients and sensibilities. Where the Chinese bak chang leans savoury, the Nyonya version is distinctly sweeter, built around wintermelon and pandan leaves rather than chestnuts and zhong ye. Kim Choo sells both, presenting them as two chapters of the same migratory story rather than competing styles.
For foreign residents settling into Katong or scouting property in the District 15 conservation belt, the shop is also a useful point of orientation. The strip around Joo Chiat Place and East Coast Road has seen steady gentrification, with restored shophouses changing hands at premium prices and new boutique developments tucked between the bakeries, kaya toast shops and Peranakan tile facades. Heritage food businesses are part of what underpins those property values, giving the area a cultural texture that newer districts struggle to replicate.
Kim Choo has leaned into that role. The company now runs tours and hands-on workshops, including dumpling and kueh making classes led by Wong himself. For buyers, expatriates and long-stay residents looking to understand why Katong commands the prices it does, an afternoon at the shop offers more context than most guidebooks. The Joo Chiat outlet at 60 Joo Chiat Place and the East Coast Road branch at 111 East Coast Road both open daily from 9am to 9pm. The kitchen is not halal-certified.
