Singaporeans who love travelling to Johor Bahru were disappointed to learn that Malaysia’s Movement Control Order (MCO) has been extended till December 31, 2020. If you frequent JB for makan outings, that means you’ll have to wait till 2021 to reunite with your beloved JB foodstuff, like Hiap Joo Bakery’s banana cake and Kam Long Ah Zai’s fish head curry.

Or so you think.

An enterprising local seller has figured out how to bring popular JB food into Singapore to cater to local demand. Brenda Tan, 42, a “mum working from home”, set up her Instagram page Pioneer Group Buy in August this year. Via the page, customers could order items including Hiap Joo’s banana cake, Yuen Fatt Biscuit Confectionery’s Shanghai-style mooncakes and Ming Ang Confectionery’s heong piah (savoury shallot pastries).

Brenda tells 8days.sg that she works with Singapore-based food importers to import food from JB. While she runs her own online business selling clothes on Facebook Live, she started selling food “as a hobby, ’cos I like to eat (laughs)”.

As Brenda and her family couldn’t travel due to Covid-19 restrictions, she decided to look for ways to bring in her family’s favourite banana cake from the 101-year-old Hiap Joo (pictured) in JB. “I found a food importer who ties up with Hiap Joo, and they could bring the cakes in,” she says. “It’s one of the must-haves for Singaporeans who go to JB regularly.”

Photo: Hiap Joo Bakery

While Hiap Joo also sells a range of buns like otak-otak and coconut, plus butter and coffee cakes, Brenda is only offering its signature Banana Cake for now. “Currently Hiap Joo Bakery only exports their banana cakes to Singapore,” she explains.

Each box comes with 10 slices (in JB, Hiap Joo has a smaller five-piece box). As for the price, it gets lower the more boxes you buy in true “group buy” spirit ($10 for one box, $8 for two boxes and above, $6.50 for a carton). But of course, it’s still costlier than JB’s pricing (a 10-piece box there is RM9.60, about S$3.20).

She adds that the cakes will be handed to customers in Hiap Joo-branded plastic bags provided by the bakery, as proof that the cake is from a genuine source. “I got feedback from customers that they had bought cakes from other sellers that were being passed off as Hiap Joo’s. But after they bought mine and compared the two, they told me the taste and texture is different,” she tells us.

Brenda now imports the cakes and other foodstuff on a weekly basis. “I try to do this every week, because there are many orders,” she says. Collection is at Brenda’s residence in Pioneer (she also meets customers at Pioneer MRT station to pass them their goods). Or you could opt for home delivery, from $8 per location depending on distance.

Other than bakes, Brenda also brings in frozen 1.5kg packs of Kam Long Ah Zai’s curry, which you could cook at home with your own supply of fish heads and veggies. The restaurant, located near the CIQ checkpoint, frequently has long queues for its piquant, lemak fish head curry eaten with hot, fluffy white rice.

Each frozen pack of curry costs $16, and yields enough gravy to feed five to six pax. According to Brenda, there’s no need to add water and it can “store up to a month in the freezer”. You also don’t have to marinate the fish head beforehand. She advises, “Best to steam the fish first, boil the curry, then add in the fish, veggies and tau kee (beancurd skin).

Update (Sept 3): Kam Long Ah Zai has appointed an official food distributor, the Singapore-based Choosy Pte Ltd, to exclusively distribute its frozen curry packs in Singapore. An announcement was also posted on Kam Long's Facebook page to inform customers of the partnership. It also explains that curry packs sold via groupbuy sellers are unaffiliated with the restaurant.

According to the distributor, it will be the sole channel through which customers in Singapore can buy the curry packs that are obtained directly from Kam Long Ah Zai (Brenda tells 8days.sg that she gets her curry packs from a distributor, who in turn get its stock from Kam Long).

Choosy's official curry packs are currently awaiting customs clearance in Malaysia, and is expected to arrive in Singapore circa mid-September, where they will be sold via the distributor's Instagram and Facebook page. Prices are unconfirmed for now, but the curry will be sold in 1kg packs. The distributor is also in talks with local supermarkets and grocery stores to stock it on their shelves in different sizes . The preservatives-free frozen curry will have an expiry date stamped on its packaging to comply with SFA regulations.

In an independent check conducted by 8days.sg with Kam Long Ah Zai, a restaurant rep confirms that Brenda’s frozen curry packs are authentic (“we sell the packs in a 1kg or 1.5kg weight to cater to customers with big and small families,” says the rep).

But the distributor also urges customers to be cautious about buying the curry packs from online sellers, as the company has no control and no way to trace if the product has been kept for a certain period before being sold to the consumer. Also, the price is not being set by the owner, and that means the price could be marked up with no control .

And if you miss Sarawak Kolo Mee, she also sells a ‘DIY kit’ with a la carte noodles ($3.50 a pack; three for $10), soy sauce blend and chilli sauce ($6.50 a bottle, three for $18). Like Kam Long’s fish head curry, you also have to cook this yourself at home, though the sauces are conveniently premade for you. Brenda is still in the midst of finalising the prices for her other imported food items, and will update her Facebook and Instagram pages once they are ready for ordering.

To order, go to www.instagram.com/pioneergroupbuy or www.facebook.com/MissyTogsB.

PHOTOS: YIP JIEYING/ BRENDA TAN/ PIONEER GROUP BUY