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Tiny Shop In Lavender Sells Tasty Traditional Chinese Pastries Like Pork Mooncake & Mochi-Style Dumplings

The quirkily-named George Mama, which started out as a home-based biz, is popular with the Chinese community in Singapore looking for a taste of home.

It’s only been a month since George Mama, a small takeaway kiosk selling traditional Chinese pastries like pork mooncake and qing tuan (mugwort dumpling), opened shop at CT Hub 2 in Lavender and it’s already making waves among those in the know.

When we dropped by last Friday at 5pm, the staff were busy preparing several large delivery orders and the display chiller was practically empty, save for a few random pastries and dumplings, which we promptly snapped up. 

The shop doesn’t have much of an online presence and currently takes pre-orders via WhatsApp or WeChat, though if you’re lucky, you can snag some treats when you visit the shop.

George Mama started out as a home-based business 

George Mama (more on the reason behind the moniker later) started out as a home-based business in 2020 by Hubei-born Zhou Pei, 31. She relocated to Singapore in 2017 after getting to know her data analyst husband, also from China, who came here to study. After working in an employment agency for three years, she started her own maid agency, but barely three months in, Covid hit and her business came to a halt as workers could not enter Singapore due to border restrictions. 

She later shut the agency to look after her son called, you guessed it, George, now three. That explains the shop’s child-like name. During her free time, the foodie would make traditional Chinese snacks and pastries and share them with friends. Word spread about her homely treats and over time, she outgrew her home-based operation.

“What started out as a group chat with a few friends on WeChat has grown to more than 4,000 members. A lot of the treats I make are traditional snacks which are very rare in Singapore. Around 90 per cent of my customers are from the Chinese community and they tell me they like the traditional and old-school taste. During festive seasons like Mid-Autumn Festival, I can sell around 300 pork mooncakes a day. Now it’s about 100,” she tells 8days.sg in Mandarin.

To increase production, she moved into a central kitchen and takeaway shop in mid-September.

Zhou Pei has no formal training in F&B. When she was younger, she learned to make old-school confectionaries from her grandma and aunt who is from Shanghai, and tweaked them to make them less sweet and oily. When she first started her home-based business, she only sold traditional pastries and snacks. They were so well-received she began experimenting with trendier ingredients like purple sweet potato and mochi to offer more flavour variations.

“I started this business purely because of my love for food. I enjoy experimenting and creating new treats. The sense of satisfaction you get when people tell you that they like your food is unparalleled,” gushes Zhou Pei. 

As Zhou Pei and her staff make everything from scratch by hand, orders have to be placed a day in advance for delivery or collection. This is to minimise wastage and ensure customers get freshly made treats. The shop is currently only open on weekdays. 

“I’m afraid we won’t be able to manage if we open daily. I’m still training my staff and looking for more helpers,” she shares. “Though we do mainly pre-orders, we will make some extras to sell at the shop as we do get some walk-in customers from the offices nearby.”

Once business operations stabilise, she hopes to start a Facebook page to reach out to more locals.

The menu

George Mama offers eight types of Chinese pastries and dumplings like chilled mung bean cake, pork mooncake, mugwort dumpling, and salted egg yolk pastries. There are also more modern offerings like Japanese-style mochi daifuku, tiramisu, and taro cake with floss. Prices start from $5 for two mugwort dumplings.

Pork Mooncake, $24 for six pcs (8 DAYS Pick!)

This is nothing like local mooncake — think of this as a meatball encased in flaky pastry. These baked savoury pork mooncakes are more commonly eaten in Shanghai than the sweet varieties we are used to in Singapore, says Zhou Pei. 

The pastry skin, made with lard and all-purpose flour, is crisp and flaky, kinda like that of tau sar piah. It’s stuffed with aromatic ground pork made extra flavourful with chopped zha cai (pickled mustard green stem) and minced ginger as well as sesame oil and soy sauce. Though not as juicy as we’d like, the meat is tender and yummy. Best eaten hot.

Mung Bean Cake, $10 for six pcs

According to Zhou Pei, chilled mung bean cake is a traditional snack commonly eaten across China. Some variations come with fillings like red bean paste but this one, which she makes from scratch by hand, doesn’t. Mung beans are steamed then mashed and fried in butter for an hour. The paste is shaped in moulds and left to set in the fridge. 

The pale yellow cake, which comes individually packed, reminds us of a mini bar of soap. Soft and delicate with a subtle sweetness, it is like a cakey version of the mung bean filling in ang ku kueh. Not bad.

Mei Cai Mugwort Dumpling, $6 for two pcs  

Known as qing tuan (green dumpling in Chinese), these chewy balls popular in Shanghai and Jiangnan come with sweet or savoury fillings. The skin is made with glutinous rice flour mixed with mugwort powder, which gives it its deep green hue.

George Mama makes them in five flavours: red bean, taro, black sesame, salted egg, and mei gan cai (preserved Chinese mustard greens). Salted egg, their bestseller, wasn’t available, so we went for the preserved mustard greens. An original creation by Zhou Pei, she was inspired after cooking mei cai kou rou (steamed pork belly with preserved mustard greens). 

The qing tuan skin is thin and pleasantly chewy with a light earthy, grassy scent of the mugwort. It isn’t too overpowering and we were surprised by how well it paired with the savoury preserved mustard green and pork belly filling.

Spicy Pork Floss Cake, $7 for two pcs

Three thin layers of soft, bouncy chiffon-like cake coated with what Zhou Pei calls “salad sauce”, then covered with orange-hued spicy pork floss. The slightly sweet white housemade sauce tastes like runny mayonnaise, but less eggy. As weird as it sounds, the components work together to give the cake a savoury, sweet, and spicy kick. Quite interesting and moreish.

Purple Rice Dumpling With Floss, $6 for two pcs (8 DAYS Pick!)

Another mod creation by Zhou Pei. Instead of cake, this pork floss-coated dumpling features a purple rice core encased in a blend of purple sweet potato and taro paste and wrapped in glutinous rice flour skin. We love this for the perfect balance of sweet, savoury and umami, as well as its wonderfully chewy skin. The sprinkling of seaweed and sesame seeds give it bits of crunchy textures with each bite. We would return just to buy this.

Salted Egg Yolk Mochi Pastry, $8 for two pcs

Salted egg pastry, or dan huang su, with an additional layer of mochi inside. Salted egg yolk is stuffed in mochi, then encased in red bean paste and wrapped in the flaky pastry. Instead of adding a whole yolk, Zhou Pei’s rendition uses mashed salted egg mixed with pork floss to add dimension to the taste and give it a better mouthfeel. “Salted egg yolk, when mashed, produces more oil when baked, so the pastry is not so dry and hard. I also decided to give it a twist by adding pork floss and mochi,” she says. 

Taste-wise, this reminded us a lot of Teochew-style flaky mooncakes. But this pastry is a tad stodgy, so we recommend heating it up in the oven to crisp up the top and get the mochi soft and chewy again. Also available with purple sweet potato paste.

Low-Fat Grains Dumpling, $6 for two pcs

Inspired by Eight Treasures zong zi (rice dumpling), these wholesome dumplings come in four variants: purple rice, taro, purple sweet potato, or black sesame. The stuffing is mixed with five “treasures” — red dates, red beans, black beans, kidney beans and chestnut bits — then wrapped in white glutinous rice flour skin and steamed. The almost fist-sized treats are quite substantial and meant to be a meal in itself. 

We opt for the black sesame-based filling, thinking it would be in paste form, but it turns out to be seeds mixed with purple rice. We’re not fans of the texture and strong earthy taste, and the dumpling skin is also too sticky. Not only does it stick to our teeth, we have problems removing it from the plastic wrapper. Zhou Pei tells us that she doesn’t grease the dumpling before wrapping as this is not done traditionally but will probably do so moving forward due to the overwhelming feedback about the overly sticky texture.

The details 

George Mama SG is at #01-15 CT Hub 2, 114 Lavender St, S338729. Open Mon- Fri noon-10pm, closed weekends. Order via WhatsApp or WeChat at 9423 5198.

Photos: Pyron Tan

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George Mama Chinese pastries pork mooncake mochi dumplings

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