F4 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2019 LATIMES.COM/FOOD
good dumpling. But we want to
give consumers another option.”
Although they both peddle
soup dumplings, Paradise Dynasty
is in many ways the anti-Din Tai
Fung, a brand whose muted decor
and delicate cooking feels like an
exercise in restraint.
Paradise Dynasty, on the other
hand, holds little back. Its loca-
tions are outfitted with ornate
chandeliers and brass trimmings
and its storefronts proclaim “Leg-
end of Xiao Long Bao.” Its sprawl-
ing menu includes Cantonese,
Sichuan and Jiangsu standards
grounded in the bold flavors of Sin-
gapore’s Chinese immigrants,
who’ve had to cook food that
stands up to the city’s Malay and
Indian cuisines.
That means bigger and juicier
xiao long bao, stir-fried greens cov-
ered in aromatic crunchy fried gar-
lic, and poached chicken doused in
a radioactive red Sichuan chile oil.
“Din Tai Fung feels monoto-
nous,” Chua said. “You go there
one time, you go there 10 times, it’s
always the same. Every time you
come to Paradise Dynasty you dis-
cover something new.”
Paradise Dynasty opened in
2010 with soup dumplings that
taste and feel somewhere between
the austere Din Tai Fung version
and the oily and dense
variety found in
mom-and-pop
restaurants in
Shanghai, the
city in China
most associated
with xiao long
bao.
In Singa-
pore, it doesn’t
pay to be subtle
in the kitchen —
not in a maritime crossroads that
has absorbed influences from
around the world. To stand out
against withering competition,
cooks have to deliver on both taste
and novelty. In 1949, Indian immi-
grant M.J. Gomez simmered a
thin, tamarind-laced curry sauce
with the head of a red snapper; fish
head curry continues to be one of
the city’s most beloved foods, often
served bubbling in a clay pot.
A few years later, an itinerant
seafood vendor named Cher Yam
Tian stir-fried crab with a bottle of
chile sauce; it has since been
tweaked by all manner of local
chefs and remains the country’s
most celebrated dish.
“Singapore loves its over-the-
top food,” said Sylvia Tan, a cook-
book author and local food histori-
an.
Early in his career, Chua knew
he needed a signature, standout
dish. His culinary education
started at 12 after he lied about his
age to get a job at McDonald’s. At
15, he was hired at a cavernous
three-story seafood restaurant,
where he learned to master fried
rice and fried noodles. He carried
those recipes and skills over to his
first venture seven years later, an
open-air food stall called a zi char
in an industrial neighborhood.
Taken from Hokkien, the dia-
lect from China’s Fujian province
spoken by much of Southeast
Asia’s Chinese diaspora, zi charlit-
erally means to cook and fry.
Dishes are always cooked to or-
der at a zi charand Chua first got
noticed by inventing his own style
of butter crab, a variant of black
pepper crab, which is a variant of
chili crab.
He fried chunks of Sri Lankan
mud crab and smothered them in a
sauce made with butter, evapo-rated milk, white pepper, coconut
crumb, curry leaves and red chiles.
Chua said customers would ask
him to bag the leftover sauce so
they could mix it with pasta to
make a sort of tropical carbonara.
The dish opened new possibil-
ities for Chua, who did not seem
predestined for success as the mar-
ginally educated son of a factory
forklift operator and a part-time
nanny. In 2006, he took out loans
and sunk his savings into a 40-seat
omakaserestaurant in the heart of
Singapore’s Chinatown. Taste Par-
adise, as the restaurant was called,
attracted a dedicated following
from Singapore’s well-to-do with a
menu that embodied the hubris of
the pre-financial-crisis era with
dishes such as foie gras in Sichuan
sauce and shark’s fin in stone pot.
One of his customers was a real
estate executive, Soon Su Lin, who
persuaded Chua to relocate inside
her luxury mall at the time, ION
Orchard.
The move proved pivotal, kick-
starting a period of exceptional
growth and newfound exposure for
Chua, whose long side-swept hair
at the time and propensity for
dressing like it was Friday night at
a club gave him the faint air of a
Hong Kong pop star. In 2008, Chua
formed Paradise Group and began
unveiling a series of new restaurant
concepts, including Paradise Clas-
sic (think zi charwith air-condi-
tioning) and Canton Paradise
(dim sum and roast meats).
The abundance of upscale
malls in a country of 5.7 million peo-
ple has created demand for reliable
restaurant tenants. The result: a
small but cutthroat restaurant
business fought over by slick cor-
porate chains, including Singa-
pore’s Imperial Treasure and Crys-
tal Jade (backed by luxury con-glomerate LVMH) and China’s
Haidilao, the hotpot brand valued
at more than $24 billion after its de-
but on the Hong Kong stock ex-
change last year triggered a frenzy.
Chua had determined that the
only way to survive and grow in
Singapore’s tiny market was to go
overseas or come up with new con-
cepts. He now operates a dozen
brands with more than 100 restau-
rants, making his company among
the biggest in the business in Sin-
gapore, with $168 million in revenue
last year (Chua sold a significant
stake of Paradise Group to invest-
ment firm PAG Asia Capital in 2016
to help fuel its growth).
A big chunk of that revenue is
owed to Chua’s extra-soupy xiao
long bao, which he purposely de-
signed to give diners what he be-
lieves is more bang for their buck
compared with Din Tai Fung.
Paradise Dynasty's dumpling
weighs in at 25 grams, splitting the
difference between Din Tai Fung's,
which the chain says is 20 grams,
and what Chua said was the typical
30 grams at hole-in-the-wall res-
taurants in China. Chua’s specialty
dumplings are dyed naturally —
squid ink colors the black truffle
dumplings, while carrot juice
brightens the kid-favorite yellow
cheese dumpling, which (to this
adult) evokes steamed calzone.
Chua only learned in August
that foie gras is banned in Califor-
nia, forcing him and his chefs to
scramble to find an attention-
grabbing replacement for his
brown dumpling colored with soy
sauce. So far, they’ve tested Peking
duck, dried scallop and a combina-
tion of Iberico ham and prosciutto.
“A lot of people say it’s just a
gimmick,” said Chua, 41. “But it
takes a lot of skill and effort to cre-
ate these xiao long bao. I challengeanother restaurant to do it as con-
sistently as we have.”
No challenge may be bigger
than having to replicate his food in
Orange County. His California staff
is currently identifying suppliers to
ensure the forthcoming restau-
rant’s dumplings and noodles taste
the same as they do in Paradise Dy-
nasty’s overseas locations. They’re
also trying to secure the same sea-
sonings, which can have an out-
sized effect, Chua said, one reason
why he believes Din Tai Fung in the
U.S. can’t fully replicate the flavors
of its Asian outlets.
(Aaron Yang, vice president of
Din Tai Fung Group USA and
grandson of the restaurant’s
founder, Bingyi Yang, did not re-
spond to a request for comment.)
“The chicken powder, the soy
sauce, even the salt can make a dif-
ference,” said Chua, who had to
pare down his menu for the U.S. be-
cause he deemed some local ingre-
dients inferior.
“You can’t get good jellyfish in
the U.S,” he said.
Regardless, Chua is relieved to
have a shot after five years of try-
ing. He was turned away by malls,
including Westfield Century City
and the Americana at Brand in
Glendale. When the customer with
the sublease, an Irvine real estate
investor, contacted him about the
Bloomingdale’s space, Chua real-
ized he had finally found a way to
pit his xiao long baoagainst Din
Tai Fung’s for a new audience.
(Chua also will introduce one of his
noodle restaurants, Le Shrimp Ra-
men, in a separate basement space
inside Bloomingdale’s).
“Din Tai Fung is the Taiwan ver-
sion of the xiao long baorestau-
rant,” Chua said. “All our food
comes from China but we do it the
Singapore way.”Eldwin Chua, founder of the Paradise chain, inspects a xiao long baoat Paradise Dynasty in Singapore. Soon he will open his first U.S. store inside Bloomingdale’s.
Photos by Marcus YamLos Angeles TimesCOOKING THE SINGAPORE WAY
[Paradise,from F1]