03/07/2026
Before evolving over the years into the you know today, our Chef has since the year 2000 not only been cooking at private housing locations for lawyers, diplomats and other professionals but also worked for some famous restaurants, stalls, kiosks.. in addition to our very own Da Hai Shan stalls/shops, of course. It took these more than 10 years to pivot from being a consummate corporate C-suite professional working on mega billion-dollar deals as a key M&A expert, to applying the same kind of incisive business acumen, precision, exacting standards and attention to details in running a very successful Chinese food business and being the frontman Commander-in-Chief... and Chef executed it beautifully.
If there was a takeaway that YOU can learn from the peaks and troughs of doing this thankless endeavour for more than 10 years, it is that there will be no more skilled artisans like us after this generation to serve time-tested heritage Singapore favourites in an elevated form that honours your forefathers. While we will always have/be lawyers, there will come a day when there will not be any more skilled Singapore heritage Chinese food chefs.
In a world where there are a zillion other alternatives in the form of way cheaper food or generic food in unsustainable styrofoam packaging, be a Da Hai Shan that cares. Be trailblazing, always thinking above and beyond the common man on the Clapham omnibus. Be unapologetically proud of pushing only the best standards and ingredients that money can buy, regardless of where you are thrown. Be sure to never devalue yourself and your billable hours in a world of opportunistic capitalists, cheapo fakes and shortcutting wastrels. Be faithful to your target market in that certain tax bracket, and never encheapen yourself to jump on trending bandwagons even if the entire world was on it. Be a lawyer who took everything thrown at them and ran with it, never dropping the ball even once. Run so very fast, and so far that you leave all your competition behind, plagiarising all your quotes while they're on their 'boss throne' out of steam, and you're out working 7days a week on refining your craft as a chef & artisan.