Ex-Guy Savoy Chef Opens HDB Void Deck Shop Selling The Best Granola We Have Ever Tried

Eating granola is usually a mundane affair — pour some into a bowl, slop some yogurt on it and chow down. But trained chef Christopher Kong’s granola bowls resemble fine-dining desserts, and are plated as such at his new granola shop, Dearborn.

The takeaway joint at an Everton Park HDB void deck functions as a production kitchen for his buzzy granola brand, which the San Francisco-born, 34, started as an online business after the circuit breaker last year. Before that, he had been operating his private diner Dearborn Supper Club out of his Chai Chee flat, where he gifted guests small bottles of homemade granola as a souvenir.

His version of the humble breakfast staple is so good, it soon earned its own reputation. “We didn’t spend a lot of money [on marketing], just word of mouth,” Chris tells 8days.sg, adding that “it worked out really well and we were able to develop it into a business”. But opening a granola shop wasn’t in his original plans — Chris had once told us that he had envisioned expanding his private supper club into “a small 30-seat restaurant with the same type of open kitchen I have at home, so guests can see me, and me, them”.

The Covid-19 pandemic put that plan on hold. When he couldn’t do private dining during the circuit breaker, Chris started selling his well-loved granola online as a source of income. “I need to survive. The pandemic makes you gain perspective on things. As much as I like cooking, [selling takeaway granola] is more practical and can reach more people,” he muses. “I didn’t think I was gonna open a granola production place, but I couldn’t ignore it anymore.”

When demand for his granola became too much for Chris to operate from home, he shifted to a central kitchen at Circular Road before finally landing a permanent space at Everton Park that now produces up to 126 jars of granola a day.

Decked out in wood and mossy shades of green, Chris wanted his kitchen to be an “open, inviting and approachable” working environment for him and his staff. His shop doesn’t have dine-in tables, ’cos dine-in licenses for that area have been fully allocated. “You can’t win them all,” he jokes. “This is more scalable.”

However, he has placed a couple of benches outside his shop where people can savour his granola bowls on the spot, plus a welcoming retail storefront for walk-in customers. Although his granola sells out in a matter of minutes online (Chris releases preorder slots on Dearborn’s website every Monday at 12pm), he also caters to walk-in sales, as he reckons that constantly selling out is not always good for business. “I need to reach a new clientele, and if you tried three times to buy something and you never get it, you’re not going to want to try again,” he says.

Chris makes some 18 granola flavours (from $16 for 260g; $28 for 500g) at Dearborn, though he’s constantly doing R&D for more flavour combinations. As a born-and-bred American-Chinese, he decided to stick to traditional flavours like chocolate, nuts and berries. “We always have things that are easy to understand,” he says. While he has offered a somewhat localised tropical mango flavour in the past, he prefers to stick to the Americanised classics: “I would never do a durian flavour. I don’t like durians, and it’s not something I want to bake with. The kitchen would smell funky!”

On weekdays, he offers a Basic Bowl of granola with your choice of either Raglan Food Co’s Coconut Vanilla Bean yogurt ($9) or Chobani’s Greek yogurt ($8). On Saturdays (his shop is closed on Sundays), Chris serves a slightly bigger and fancier repertoire of house-made breads like a Smoked Cheddar & Chilli Cheese Loaf ($25) and Dearborn Butter with Toast ($5), plus Granola Bowls ($14) in two flavours, Strawberries & Cream and Milk & Coffee.

Prior to starting his private diner, Chris was a sous chef at the defunct one-Michelin-starred restaurant NoMad in New York, which was opened by acclaimed chef Daniel Humm (of three-starred Eleven Madison Park fame). In Singapore, he had also worked at Guy Savoy and two-Michelin-starred Waku Ghin.

Which explains why his granola bowls are so meticulously plated; Chris sets up his mise en place for our granola bowls like he would in a fine-diner. He nudges each morsel into place with tweezers and crowns a scoop of house-made milk ice cream for his Milk & Coffee granola bowl with coffee espuma, a creamy culinary foam first created by El Bulli founder Ferran Adriá that’s made by using a whipping siphon bottle.

All that effort that goes into elevating granola is the reason why Chris sells his granola at $28 for half a kilo. Each pack is loaded with quality stuff like organic Grade A maple syrup and rolled oats from Australia and Finland that Chris had to sign a six-month contract for to secure his supply. “It’s not just adding a bunch of ingredients. We make [things like] the banana jam and peanut butter ourselves,” he says earnestly. “People don’t necessarily see or know, but that’s why it’s different. And that’s the value in the product itself.”

And there’s also a ‘proper’ way to enjoy your pricey artisanal granola. “Our granola ages and tastes better the next day, rather than fresh out of the oven. The flavour is kind of mellow [when you eat it fresh],” says Chris.

The Berries granola has organic rolled oats, dried strawberries, cranberries and blueberries, almonds and pumpkin seeds sweetened with dark brown sugar and maple syrup. It’s a divine combination of tart, earthy and sweet, though we prefer the lighter, coconutty Raglan yogurt over the tangier Chobani yogurt for our granola.

The same maple syrup-drenched rolled oats are now paired with 54% dark chocolate buttons and fragrant whole hazelnuts. To heck with our healthy diet, we want to eat this for all three meals every day with the vanilla bean-flecked yogurt.

Slivers of toasted coconut flesh mingled with sliced almonds, pumpkin seeds, plus organic cranberries and coconut sugar. This is also delish, though even as a coconut fan we find the coconut flavour in this overwhelmingly strong.

We don’t think we have the kind of patience to assemble a bowl like this at home. A scoop of house-made crème fraîche ice cream sits on a bed of dainty yogurt sable curls, cranberry granita, fresh strawberries and berries granola, finished with a drizzle of lemon oil and a dusting of powdered berries. The cold velvety ice cream and icy granita with an acidic tang soften the crunchy granola chunks and the delicately crisp sable. It feels like we’re enjoying a dessert straight from the kitchen of a three-Michelin-starred restaurant, even though we’re sitting at a void deck with wild chickens pecking around us.

Chris pairs milk ice cream with coffee granita and hazelnut-chocolate granola for this bowl, which is carefully topped with coffee espuma (Spanish for ‘foam’) he dispenses from a metal siphon canister and a light drizzle of salt (“I always like to finish desserts with a little bit of salt.”) The ephemeral ensemble melts within a mere minute, but during that time you enjoy the sultry bitterness of the espuma and coffee granita with a dash of smooth ice cream and crunchy granola. But if you have a sweet tooth, we recommend going for the perkier Strawberries & Cream bowl; this one is for the black coffee and dark choc lovers.

There are three chilled drinks offered at Dearborn: refreshing Cucumber and Lemon Soda ($6), a smooth Seasonal Black Cold Brew ($6) and our personal favourite, this Yuzu and Citrus Soda, which has a whiff of what seems like ginger in the concoction. Considering that a basic granola bowl fills your tummy nicely (despite its petite-looking portions), these cold beverages quench our hot day thirst without making us too full.

#01-29, 1 Everton Park, S081001. Open daily except Sun. Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat 9am-1pm. www.dearborn.sg.

Photos: Kelvin Chia