Pang Kok Keong

Pang's parents are ishball noodles hawkers[2] who owned a stall in Jurong.[3] He grew up helping his mother in the kitchen. As a teenager, Pang worked part-time jobs in coffee shops and restaurants to earn pocket money.[3]

Pang studied in Rulang Primary School and Yuhua Secondary School.[3] He enrolled in the Singapore Hotel and Tourism Education Centre (SHATEC) at 16 years old[3] and graduated with a diploma in food preparation in 1996.[2]

Pang started pastry-making during a work attachment at the Imperial Hotel,[2] where he was assigned to the pastry section due to a lack of manpower.[3]

Pang was the Executive Pastry Chef at Les Amis Group’s first pastry shop, Canelé Pâtisserie, in 2004.[4]

He set up Pang's Hakka Delights in 2018 as a way to revisit his Hakka roots. Pang cited leek kueh as a childhood dish made by his mother, who learned the recipe from her grandmother.[5] When learning to make the dish, Pang mentioned that he had to learn it from memory, tasting the dish as he goes.[5] Pang wanted to safeguard the legacy of Hakka dishes through this business venture[5] as he found that these recipes were rarely documented. The restaurant served also served documenting Hakka cuisine for the younger generation.

With Pang's Hakka Delights, Pang tested various Hakka recipes like salt-baked chicken, yellow ginger poached chicken, and mei cai kou rou (pork belly with preserved mustard greens).[5]

In 2018, Pang started selling abacus seeds, a Hakka dish commonly consumed during Chinese New Year.[6]

Pang shared that it was initially difficult to convince his colleagues to accept his passion for making Hakka food, as it was a labour-intensive process.[6]

Pang has been participating in pastry competitions since 1996.[7] These competitions were an outlet for his creativity.[3] In 2011, Pang was inducted into the Pastry Chef Hall of Fame and is the youngest to receive such an honour.[1]