A Chef at a Top Restaurant Quit to Open a Café, Care for Grandmother

When I entered the apartment unit in Singapore’s far west, I almost thought I’d taken a wrong turn.

Aside from a wooden bar cart with a sign and a coffee machine station, there was little indication that the apartment hosted a new café run by Chia Jin Fang, who until March cooked at a top restaurant.

Chia guided me to the wooden dining table, which was sitting under a wooden cross on the wall.

Lunar New Year decorations were still hanging from the walls in June. I spotted her 86-year-old grandmother hanging laundry.

Chia’s new workplace could not be more different from her kitchen in Les Amis, a three-Michelin-starred French restaurant in Orchard, Singapore’s high-fashion shopping district.

A fruitful but unhappy career in fine dining

Chia fell into restaurants early, studying culinary arts at Singapore’s Institute of Technical Education. Then followed a short internship at Les Amis, where she was converted to a full time chef in 2016.

She loved how the menus changed with the seasons in France and that she could work with the best produce.

But it was grueling work.

“I’d leave the house at 6:30 a.m. and only be back home at midnight,” Chia, 29, said.

Although she got the weekends off, she slept through them to recharge.

“Even though I loved what I did at Les Amis, I felt like I was wasting myself away,” she said.

Les Amis did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

An unexpected diagnosis turned her world upside down

The turning point for Chia came when her grandmother, who raised her, was diagnosed with dementia in December.

Chia quit her job at Les Amis in March to take care of her grandmother.

“Somehow it feels like the roles are reversed now, where I am the adult, she’s like the kid because of her dementia, and I’m taking care of her,” Chia said.

Although she knew it was the right move, she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of regret about leaving her restaurant job.

“I still loved what I did there. It felt like a waste, because at the point they were giving me a salary raise as well,” she said.

She said she earned 4,500 Singapore dollars a month, or about $3,500, when she worked as a sous chef.

But the chef had always dreamed of building something of her own.

Renting space for a café was out of the question in Singapore, one of the world’s most expensive cities.

She landed on starting a home-based café. Like many millennials in Singapore, Chia lives with her parents and her grandmother in a public housing apartment.

She spent SG$7,000 on the equipment needed for a café: an espresso machine, a coffee grinder, a small refrigerator, and some wooden tables.

By May, she launched The Noob Coffee.

$5 drinks and homemade banana cake, served by a chatty grandmother

Chia said that despite her years in the kitchen, the closest she had come to making drinks was preparing sauces. She bought a coffee machine and grinder with no idea how to use them.

But she wanted a break from cooking, so she decided to launch a drinks-only café.

“I named it The Noob Coffee because I’m a noob to drinks. It felt like I was starting afresh,” she said.

Her menu includes basic black-and-white coffees, starting from SG$4. Her most popular concoctions are her Earl Gray matcha and strawberry and yogurt matcha, which cost SG$6 and SG$6.50, respectively.

The first sip of the Earl Grey matcha was refreshing, sweet but not overly so. The Earl Grey syrup, which she makes herself, complemented the matcha’s bitterness.

The drink paired nicely with a slice of fresh homemade banana cake that was soft, moist, and filled with gooey chocolate chips.

Chia said that she sells about 100 drinks daily on weekdays, and over 200 on weekends. She said the business has made about SG$2,000 a week since the May launch.

Word of her café spread on social media, and demand has been high enough that she asked customers to reserve 15-minute timeslots to buy their drinks.

Ye Min Yin, an after-work regular, said she loves chatting with Chia’s grandmother. Ye, a 27-year-old business owner, said Noob’s matcha was thick and worth the price, not diluted like other cafés she’d tried.

Guests are welcome to sit around the family dining table to enjoy their drinks. Chia said her grandmother helps where she can, passing drinks to customers and making small talk.

“During the opening, I saw her going around talking to people, and it was nice to see her this way, Chia said. “I cannot cure her dementia, of course, but I can slow its progress down.”

For Chia, the café is a chance to take it easier. She says she starts her day by baking banana cake and having coffee, and she mans the operation from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

At Les Amis, she said she barely interacted with customers.

“I feel more accomplished because this is what I started myself,” she said. “So, at the end of the day, even though I’m tired, I still feel very fulfilled.”