No Signboard Seafood Restaurant (The Central)

Back in the late 1970s, we started our stall at the Mattar Rd Hawker Centre without a signboard. Since cooking had been my forte, Ah Kaw and myself decided to make it our means of livelihood. I concocted the recipe for the white pepper crab while Ah Kaw cycled down to Tekka Market to buy our supply of live crabs. Sales started with only about 3 crabs a day.

Back in those days, selling seafood in a hawker center was uncommon. Eating crab was much less popular unlike today, where the chilli crab has made its way to be the unofficial “national” dish of Singapore. So I suppose we were in a niche market with the success of our homemade white pepper crab.The other critical success factor would be the endless word of mouth advertising that our customers did for us. They spread word of our tantalizing white pepper crab and referred to us as the stall with no signboard.

The rest of the credit, I have to say goes to my culinary skills and the fresh ingredients I used. Since 1981, we have relocated and expanded no signboard seafood around many parts of Singapore.

A bit too much for an old person like me to remember but it goes a little like this...