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For those who do not know what tutu kueh is, it is a rice flour cake typically filled with coconut or peanuts. For more creative stalls, they sometimes include more modern flavours of red bean, chocolate, or gula melaka.
Tan’s Tu Tu Coconut Cake was the first to start the whole ball rolling. Being the OG tutu kueh hawker stall in Singapore, Tan Bee Hua, the daughter of Tan, runs 2 stalls on a back-to-back basis.
She runs the Havelock outlet in the day and Clementi outlet in the evening, and the long hawker hours of mending 2 stalls have become tiresome. Hence, the Clementi outlet will be closed permanently, and the Havelock Road Cooked Food Centre outlet will be temporarily closed till July 2023.
This Singaporean snack goes way back to the 1930s when Tan’s late father, Tan Yong Fa, sold the China-originated snack in Singapore. He first started selling it as plain song kueh, without any filling. But subsequently, he creatively added his own twist of sweet fillings— which birthed and popularised the well-loved tutu kueh which we are familiar with today.
The decision must have come with a heavy heart, as she gave up her corporate job of 20 years to carry on her father’s legacy.
With no official announcement, we found out that the Clementi outlet has been vacated since Dec 2022, while the other outlet at Havelock updated their Instagram bio with its temporary break. With the closure of these stalls, they will surely be missed for its bite-size taste of nostalgia.
I remember an instance when I was in line for Covent Garden Prawn Noodle, a lady struck up a conversation with me about tutu kueh as she saw me snacking on them. She spoke very well of Tan’s Tu Tu Coconut Cake and I wasn’t surprised at all. There has to be a reason why people would wait 45-minutes just for tutu kueh, and it’s an unsaid fact that we all appreciate its delicacy and heritage.
For a small amount of S$0.80 each, you can get the Coconut, Peanut or Original Tutu Kueh. Just an additional 10 cents more, you can get their most adventurous offering— the Chocolate Tutu Kueh (S$0.90 each).
Well, for now, we can just wait till the reopening of Tan’s Tu Tu Coconut Cake. I hope the owner will be sufficient rested to continue on serving up the well-famed pillow-like snacks.
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