Gen Z Hawkers Open No-Frills Carrot Cake Stall Named… “Fried Carrot Cake”

For a young hawker, Tan Jia Le is surprisingly old school when it comes to his trade. The 23-year-old opened the simply named Fried Carrot Cake in a Bishan kopitiam in mid-April, where he hawks black and white versions of chai tow kway from $3.20 a plate. He has no plans to modernise the traditional dish, nor does he dream of opening new branches. In fact, his stall is not even listed on Google Maps. The joint’s only social media presence is an Instagram account started by his girlfriend and co-owner Tan Li Xuan, 22 – which at the time of writing, has only one photo, posted today. And a Facebook page which they incidentally also set up today, perhaps inspired to be more digitally connected after our interview with them. They make a contrasting couple with his towering height and her petite frame.

Frying carrot cake since he was 16

This is the shy, down-to-earth hawker’s first full-time job, having started Fried Carrot Cake fresh out of National Service. However, this does not mean that he’s inexperienced – Jia Le has been frying carrot cake since he was a teen. “I started to learn how to cook carrot cake at 16. I was helping out at a family friend’s kopitiam stall on weekends,” he says. He declines to share details of the stall, except that his mentor owns two chai tow kway stalls.

Having no formal culinary training or education, the Nitec graduate says he became interested in becoming a hawker after he started working part-time at the stall for three years until his NS enlistment. “I don’t have much education. As I was helping out at the stall, I started to think that [starting a small food biz] is something I can do. They trusted me to fry chai tow kway for customers and that gave me the confidence to open my own stall.” 

Jia Le says his mentor is supportive of his new venture. “He taught me everything from scratch. We are also using the same supplier for the kway (steamed radish cake).”

Girlfriend has F&B experience too

Li Xuan helps out at the stall daily by taking orders from customers. After the stall closes at around 1pm, the soft-spoken, reticent hawker – who has a diploma in pastry-making from SHATEC – bakes customised cakes for her home-based business Lulubakes. She’s been running the HBB with her older sister, who’s also a baker, for the past four years.

Before Jia Le roped her in to launch their carrot cake stall, Li Xuan used to work at her mother’s eatery, Orchard Yong Tau Fu – a popular, two-decade-old YTF joint at Cuppage Plaza. Her mum was supportive of their plan to open a stall. “We use some of the same suppliers as my mum. She also gave us advice on how to manage costing.” The pair invested around $10K to set up Fried Carrot Cake, with some help from their family.

Old-school approach

Unlike many Gen-Z (zoomer) hawkers, Jia Le is refreshingly spartan when it comes to running his biz. His straightforward stall name, Fried Carrot Cake, is just one example. “I can’t use my mentor’s name and I couldn’t think of other names, so I just kept it simple,” he shares.

Despite having a partner who’s experienced in running an online biz, Jia Le prefers to keep the stall’s social media presence to a minimum and focus on running the stall instead. “We discussed some ideas, but in the end we decided to keep it simple,” he says. “We’re not thinking of opening more branches at all. We just want to sell good carrot cake,” he asserts.

Early birds

The couple says most of their customers are senior citizens from the surrounding HDB estates. It's also why they open the stall at 6am to cater to the breakfast crowd. Business has been “quite quiet” in the heartland coffee shop and Li Xuan shares that she worries about sales sometimes. “We’re not on delivery platforms because we’ll have to raise the prices by a lot, which doesn’t make sense as chai tow kway is not an expensive dish.” Recently, they’ve started to notice returning customers, which gives them hope that biz will keep improving in the future.

White Carrot Cake, from $3.20

We like the neat layers of omelette-style carrot cake here – rustic rectangles of supplier-bought steamed radish cake are strewn across beds of fried egg and chai poh (preserved radish). The crispy edges also add a lovely contrast to the tender kway. Even for the spicy version we ordered, which features sambal from a supplier stir-fried into the dish, we found the overall flavour to be a bit bland and it lacks a wok-kissed smokiness that usually makes the dish so alluring.

Black Carrot Cake, from $3.20

This chai tow kway is definitely lighter on the sweet dark soy sauce than most – Jia Le’s restrained seasoning takes away some of the charm of the sticky, messy sweet-savoury black carrot cake dishes that we enjoy. Not bad if you prefer a lighter style of black carrot cake.

Bottom line

The chai tow kway here is lighter-tasting than most and better suited for the stall’s predominantly senior customers. We prefer the white version, which is satisfyingly crispy.  

Fried Carrot Cake is at 150A Bishan St 11, S571150. Open daily 6am-1pm, closed every 2nd & 4th Monday. Instagram Facebook

Photos: Aik Chen