Singapore (Commonwealth Union)_Cher Yam Tian lived by the beach and her husband Lim Choon Ngee was fond of fishing. Most often the catch would include mud crab but the couple were tired of the usual steam and eat recipe. Cher decided to stir fry the crab in tomato sauce and serve it up. Lim added his two cents worth and asked her to add chillie sauce into the mix as the original flavour was too sweet. This is the seventy year old tale of the world famous Singapore Chillie crab that every self-respecting Asian restaurant serving crab would be ashamed not to have on their menu.
Cher died of a lung infection at the age of ninety but her legacy continues to live on with the tributes raining in from all over the world, for her dish ranked among the most delicious meals the world over.
Cher never failed to serve up her invention to family and friends and realising its popularity, began selling the crab dish in a push cart, naming it Chilli Crab. Six years later in 1956, she bought herself a little shack and lit it with hurricane lamps to serve her delicacy. From the shack she graduated to a more plush eatery in 1963, putting up a signboard that read, ‘Palm Beach Seafood’ which had no affinity to Palm Beach Florida but rather was aligned with the palm trees fringing the beach nearby.
While Cher is the Great Inventor of the Singapore Chilli Crab, it was Chef Hooi Kok Wai who decided to add eggs and the mixture of chillies and prawn paste (sambal) into the stir fry and serve up the crab in a thick sweet and savoury gravy, to be mopped up with fried or steamed buns.
The dish itself has gone through some transformations but for Cher to experiment with a traditional mud crab serving was almost sacrilegious in the Asian food culture. The other fact is that nothing deterred her. She simply stirred her pot and took its flavours to the outside world without thinking twice. She was brave and it is that courageousness that she whipped into this sweet and spicy dish that today is legendary.
Cher’s sons Roland and Richard Lim were not going to let his mother’s legacy disappear into the flames. They founded the one thousand seater Roland Restaurant 15 years after Palm Beach was sold in 1985 and made sure Singapore Chilli Crab gains pride of place in the expansive menu the restaurant hands out to its discerning customers.
