Singaporean restaurant losing its home, faces closure

This story was first printed in the Jan. 9 print edition of the Daily Post. If you want to get all the important local news stories first, pick up the Post in the mornings at 1,000 Mid-Peninsula locations. The Post’s print edition is so popular that our competitors use it to get their story ideas.

BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer

A Singaporean restaurant that’s been in downtown Menlo Park for 25 years is getting kicked out, and the family that owns the business is crushed.

The family is worried about laying off eight employees and letting down their regulars who make up 80% of the business, co-owner Dennis Lam said in an interview yesterday (Jan. 8).

“A lot of my customers are like family … The community is very important,” Lam said. “We love to talk to the customers,” added Lam’s mother, Rosalind Tan.

Tan opened Shiok Singapore Kitchen with her kids in 1999 because she enjoyed entertaining friends with food.

At the time, ethnic cuisine was rarer on the Peninsula — even finding sushi was a challenge, Tan said.

The restaurant started in San Carlos for six months then moved to 1137 Chestnut St., a side street between Oak Grove and Santa Cruz Avenues in Menlo Park. Cousins and friends helped out, and the menu changed every week, Tan said. “The recipes are mostly from my mom, and as I go along I put in some more,” she said.

Cooking a family affair

Tan’s mother was a cook and part of the Peranakan culture in Singapore. She didn’t measure anything — “agak-agak” is the phrase they used for adding an es- timated amount, Tan said.

Tan started cooking with her own daughter and then hired her neighbors.

The restaurant has never had to post a job opening because past employees made referrals, Lam said.

The customer base also grew through word of mouth. The restaurant was packed during the dot-com boom and never recovered after the bust, Lam said. Shiok Singapore Kitchen is the only Singaporean restaurant between San Jose and San Francisco, Lam said.

Dignitaries visit

The restaurant caters Singapore’s National Day every year for the Singapore Consulate-General in San Francisco.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visited the restaurant in 2016, accompanied by the United States Secret Service and a motorcade, Lam said.

Regulars come from Monterey to Santa Rosa, and Tan said she’s watched kids grow up and then bring in their own kids.

Many of their regulars are older, and some have passed away, Tan said.

Locals travel to Singapore and then seek the restaurant out when they get back to Menlo Park, Tan said.

The restaurant had to close for two years during Covid lockdown and has catered to office workers to stay afloat since then, Tan said.

Building sold

The building owner died last year and passed the building on to her kids, who wanted to sell, Lam said. Just before Christmas, Lam said he received notice to leave by the end of January. The landlord said the building needed to be empty to sell, Lam said.

“All of this is very fresh for us,” he said.

Lam said he doesn’t know what’s next. He wants to stay open so his four kitchen workers and four waiters can support their families. But finding a new location and moving the equipment would take months, akin to starting a new restaurant, he said.

“Thirty days is just impossible,” he said. “I don’t know how they expect us to move. I honestly don’t know.”