Double Degree Teppanpau

Tan Ee Khai, master teppan pau-rista.

He's got degrees in Environmental Sciences and Chemical Sciences from Victoria University in Melbourne. As a researcher with the Victoria government, he was stationed on Philip Island, Queensland, collecting data on the smallest penguin in the world, the Little Blue (also known as Fairy penguins or Little penguins). Working through all weather, and waking at different, unstructured times of the day and night was bearable, but it was the solitude that drove Tan Ee Khai batty. "And the penguins bite!" he laughs.

So he returned to Malaysia and joined a company selling water treatment equipment and services as a sales engineer and chemist. Two years later, because his father needed help in his raw materials factory which supplied the furniture factory, he jumped in for a stint lasting close to ten years. Meanwhile, his mother hawked oil fritters (eu char kuey or yoo tiau) near their home in Menjalara on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Not because the family needed the extra income, but because mama Tan had an irrepressible culinary spirit. Each time she added items to her stall's offerings, they sold out. She then began developing a flat bread stuffed with both sweet and savoury Chinese traditional fillings, and grilled on a hot plate. She called it teppan pau. The first time she offered it at her stall, it sold out in minutes.

When the senior Tan male retired from his factory, Eek Khai had no desire to continue the business, deciding instead to focus on the food business. "A business which does not manufacture a product relies too much on credit. Food is cash," says the young entrepreneur.

Working with his mother, they upped their production capacity of teppan pau and began offering their wares full time at a relative's coffee shop in Cheras. While there, customers suggested they hawk at the night market, and so they began at the Cheras Pertama pasar malam on Tuesdays, then Kepong's Taman Ehsan on Thursdays and Paramount on Sundays. The business has since expanded to cover SS2, Choy Yang and SS4 in Petaling Jaya.

Volume depends on location, with near a thousand pieces of teppan pau sold at SS2 night market, followed by 400 at Chow Yang. Between 200-300 is the average.

Teppan paus on the grill pan.

The simple paus are made from flour, yeast and sugar. Tan says the dough is closer to that for bread making as opposed to pau, since the teppan paus are not steamed. "Everything is home made, by hand. There are no preservatives in the dough or ingredients. Our coconut filling is made from freshly grated coconut, unpressed for the milk. It is flavoured with gula Melaka from Melaka. When we began it used to be just peanut and red bean, but we increased the filling variety to include coconut because it was popular. We have three sweet fillings (red bean, coconut and peanut) and two savoury ones, dried shrimp and barbecue pork. We also used to have curry potato chicken and turnip, but they were messy to grill, as the gravy in the filling would seep out. Also, turnips don't keep well, and we did not want to chance someone buying a spoilt product. The barbecue pork variant came about when my mum did a YouTube video on how to make char siew pau (barbecued pork buns). Our pork is all lean meat, sliced by hand, and mixed to mum's special recipe," shares Tan.

Grilled and ready to go.

One family member can make 300 paus in an hour-and-a-half. It takes three persons 45 minutes for the same volume. The sweet varieties are priced at 90 sen. The barbecued pork at RM1.10 and the dried shrimp at RM1.50.

Madam Fong's Teppan Pau
SS2 night market, Monday; SS4 night market, Wednesday; Chow Yang night market, Thursdays, Paramount night market Sundays.