Ultimately, I love serving food. I think it is one of the most intimate acts you can do; to cook a meal and present it to someone, whether you know them or you don’t know them. I think it is a very intimate gesture. You are giving another person something that you have spent God knows how long crafting. It is a fleeting moment as well because it is consumed, and it is over and done with. It’s amazing when there are certain meals that you still hold in your memory and you can say, oh my gosh do you remember that time we ate whatever it was. That moment was fleeting, but you crave that taste again. There is something very intimate and special when you feed someone.
Alan Chong made the news last year when he gave meals away to struggling Melburnians negatively impacted by the fallout from Covid-19 lockdowns. Over the course of a few months, Chong and his team at Tian 38 cooked and gave away hundreds of meals to people who weren't eligible for JobKeeper or JobSeeker, people who were vulnerable and struggling in the pandemic. But that's not the only reason Alan and Tian 38 are special. Alan loves serving people the food he has created. He sees it as one of the most intimate acts you can do for someone. He hasn't closed over any of the lockdowns and continues to serve his chilli crab jaffles, Hainanese chicken and vegemite osso buco rendang to adoring fans. Responding to the demand, Alan's Tian to You boxes are now going out to suburbs beyond the 10km radius of Flinders Lane, so if you live in Doncaster or Melton, Hughesdale or Mordialloc, amongst many others, there's a day of the week with your name on it and a memorable culinary experience to be had.
Hi Alan. It's lovey to meet you. How are you?
Hi Jo, have a seat. It has been so interesting, obviously, during this lockdown 6. We were only 6 months old prior to lockdown.
The first lockdown?
Yes, and when the first lockdown happened, the fear factor was very high. The CBD was a real ghost town. You wouldn't find a single car in here. But there is a lot of fatigue now, so people have bent the rules and so on. Maybe rightfully so, it has been two years. The government hasn't approached this in the right way.
It's tricky. You want to give the government the benefit of the doubt because it is such an unknown, but it has dragged on.
It has dragged on. And there are mixed messages as well. For us in the hospitality industry, we are very simple folk. We just want to serve food and drink and now we have to find other avenues to do so.
Absolutely. You made the news last year by helping out lots of people in need and you had only been open six months yourselves. I read some articles written about you at the time, but how long were you supplying free dinners?
That was all throughout Lockdown 2.0. We are still supporting charities now; The Humble Mission operates a little bit further down the road on a Saturday at 1.30pm and we supply some goods to them.
It's interesting now compared to Lockdown 2.0. The amount of support that was given during Lockdown 2.0 was absolutely lacklustre. Now at least there are covid emergency payments, but in Lockdown 2.0, the message going out in the community was horrendous. It was, oh you're not an Australian resident, so pack your bag, you should be gone. Easier said than done because there were no flights. So, you know, charge these kids $20 000 a year or whatever in school fees and then basically tell them to fuck off.
Were they the main recipients of your Wednesday dinners?
Correct. Then you had JobKeeper ratchet down, so then we saw other people start coming through. Imagine youre a young family with a child. We saw that. We saw young families with toddlers. They were on JobKeeper or whatever and it wasnt a realistic amount.
You obviously saw a need, so did you then just think, I'm going to do this?
Pretty much. The first week of lockdown, we just did it.
How could you afford to do that? Was it a big sacrifice for you?
We had surplus stock. But to be honest, I was ready to shut. I knew I couldn't open or function as a restaurant, so I thought, there were so many people in the same boat, why dont we just do this before the ship sinks. I'd accepted our fate. But karma works in funny ways. We got a lot of community support after that.
Were you also operating as a takeaway?
Yes.
You must have been busy?
Well, the first couple of lockdowns, we weren't that busy. But we did have a few grants and subsidies that kept us going. I kept a skeleton staff of only three people. Now I have doubled my team.
I guess it would have been hard if you had only been open for six months to have made a name for yourself and for people to know you and want to get takeaways from here.
Absolutely right. It was really hard.
So then it has been very stop start since that lockdown. Valentine's Day.
That's right, and Lunar New Year. That was a big bummer. It was a real kick in the guts. It's funny, it has been two years now. I had an order last week where they messaged me to say it was their birthday and they wanted to order from Tian and they ordered last year for their birthday; they've made it a little Covid tradition.
I love that. Wellit would be nicer if it was an out of Covid tradition, but it's still something.
It is what it is.
Tell me about the foodwell, firstly, what does Tian 38 mean?
It's pretty funny; we took up two shops: Shop 3 and Shop 8 and Tian literally means shop, so Shop 3 and Shop 8.
It sounds more exotic than that!
It does but it's literal meaning is Shop 3 and Shop 8. So that's it.
It's clever.
It's a naming convention you'll find in some places in Asia, so we just took that. It's a good question because many people ask that question.
I was reading that you describe your food as 'new school Chinese'. What do you mean by that?
I like the fact that this restaurant is not in Chinatown. I like it because Melbourne is such a diverse city and there are so many elements here. If you ask yourself what Australian cuisine is, people say it is a wonderful melting pot of a lot of cultures and I tell anyone who visits Australia or who lives here but has travelled overseas, you can grab a great bowl of pho in Melbourne, you can grab great pastrami sandwiches in Melbourne and great pasta. You can grab anything. It's an amazing melting pot. I spent a lot of time in Singapore, and I wanted to find that element, because you know, Malaysian Singaporean food is a delicious cuisine, but it is always in some sort of backwater food court environment; that's not the way it should be. It is a really great tasting food. The challenge is then to elevate it.
What characterises Singaporean food, or is it more about what characterises your food?
I take all those elements. We have a chilli crab jaffle. Chilli crab is an iconic Singaporean dish and you can put anything in a jaffle and it tastes great. Out the back I've just done some Rendang pies and chicken laksa piesfootie finals are just around the corner. So you know I think, what's Australian and I'll just jazz it up a little bit with a twist. Jaffles are a very Melburnian thing, so I thought I'd put some chilli crab and mozzarella in there and see how it goes. It's delicious. We like to have a bit of fun and at the heart of it all, it's an Australian restaurant with heavy Chinese Singaporean influences. That's it. We're on Flinders Lane. In Melbourne. Technically we are an Australian restaurant because were in Australia. Australia is where I have lived for most of my life, the past 34 years.
You were little when you came here?
Yes, I was born in Brunei. I came here when I was 6.
Do you remember being little in Brunei?
I still do, oddly enough. I have lots of memories and I would regularly go back to visit family there. I used to visit regularly, once or twice a year. Then I spent some of my career in Singapore.
Did you train here and go to Singapore?
I think I am still training, to be honest. You always are. The culinary thing is so rich, you are always training. Actually, I learned that from an amazing sushi chef I came across. He's an older gentleman and he was serving his omakase. I was with my friend and my friend asked him how long it took him to train to get to this level and in typical Japanese styles, he said that he was still training. He was a 58-year-old gentleman, and he was still training. That really struck me.
But when you started down the road, what made you want to be a chef?
Food is a passion. You have to understand it. You're in the kitchen, you're learning things.
Is it something you always wanted to do?
I think it's something that at a stage in timeI was a banker before. I worked in finance. That was a ten-year career. Hospitality to date has been a ten-year career. Half of my working life had been in banking and finance and the other half has been in hospitality. I think, ironically, being in finance helped me navigate through challenging times in Covid; being on top of my finances.
Well, it's a big thing. It's not just about cooking, you have to be on top of everything.
It's running a business.
Is this the first restaurant you've run?
The first in Melbourne. I still have a restaurant in Singapore. I just haven't been able to travel back. I used to have a couple in Sydney but that was a long time ago.
Amazing. I guess you're just really waiting to get out of lockdown and be normal.
Pretty much. The definition of normal is pretty different now.
As you say, you obviously love food and cooking and coming up with ideas, but hospitality is also about the people, isn't it? And not so much them coming and going to pick up takeawaysyou can't see them eating.
No that's right. I think we are blessed to have regulars who come by for takeaway and you see them and have a chat to them, but generally, the engagement isn't there. You can't host them. The moment you have with them is fleeting at best. We do deliveries. We have a little initiative called Tian To You and we are trying to reach beyond the usual 5km radius.
You're going quite far now.
Yes so we make sure everything is packed and we supply the instructions as well.
Is that on certain days of the week you go to certain suburbs?
Correct. And the 5km is a day-to-day everyday coverage and then we select particular suburbs, so we can maintain reach and tap into other markets. One thing I guess we are quite proud of, is that ever since halfway through Lockdown 1.0 and onwards, we haven't closed, we haven't skipped a beat. We have a menu that we know works very well dine-in but easily converts to takeaway if need be. We've found that sweet spot.
What do people get in Tian To You?
We've got a selection from our menu; things that we know will last and reheat well and they are very iconic Singaporean dishes and iconic to our interpretations as well, so our free-range chicken satay. It's a very traditional recipe. If you try satay, there are some really bastardized recipes out there and I think they are horrendous, to be honest. Ours is authentic and wonderful.
Is it spicy, or what makes yours stand out?
It has a bit of spice, but not too much, but it is really about the marination and the cooking method as well. I'm not putting it under a salamander grill, it is being cooked over a proper grill. Our Hainanese chicken. We use Hazeldene's fantastic, amazing free-range chicken and we poached it, steep it, and serve with very aromatic rice. We don't skimp on the aromatics; chilli, lime, ginger, garlic, lemongrass, pandan leaf, the full shebang. I've never touted it to be the best in Melbourne, but we let our clientele speak and they believe it is and that's a wonderful thing. I never blow my own trumpet. You leave it to your clientele to judge. Our chilli crab jaffles go out, our vegemite osso buco rendang, which is delicious. Our Singapore chilli crabswe use Northern Territory mud crabs, served with mantau bread which is absolutely delicious and soaks up all the sauce. We can't travel but I like to use that moniker; I'll take you to Singapore instead, through a culinary journey.
It sounds incredible. You were saying you were in banking for 10 years and you've been in hospitality for 10 years, are you going to have another change or is this it for you?
We'll see how this plays out, to be honest. Funnily enough, I was in banking through the global financial crisis and I'm in hospitality through the Covid crisis; every sort of career change has been marked by some sort of global catastrophe. But you keep plugging away.
What would your advice be to someone who wants to become a chef? Maybe pandemics aside.
For myself, I am relatively low-key. I enjoy having a one-on-one conversation, but I can't really speak to the multitudes of people. I think that's what got me into it. Chefs used to be behind the scenes. We didn't used to have to talk to people. It is a very different world now. Some chefs are quasi celebrities. It's not the angle I am personally comfortable with. I like my quiet time. But ultimately, I love serving food. I think it is one of the most intimate acts you can do; to cook a meal and present it to someone, whether you know them or you don't know them. I think it is a very intimate gesture. You are giving another person something that you have spent God knows how long crafting. It is a fleeting moment as well because it is consumed, and it is over and done with. It's amazing when there are certain meals that you still hold in your memory and you can say, oh my gosh do you remember that time we ate whatever it was; that moment was fleeting, but you crave that taste again. There is something very intimate and special when you feed someone. It's not like a bank loan!
Perfect. Thank you, Alan.
350 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Photography @miagoreng