Cover Soh Huishan, chef-partner at Catkin by Huishan
Soh Huishan, chef-partner at Catkin by Huishan
1 / 1
In Partnership With
The 27-year-old pastry chef, who is creating the desserts for the second edition of Off Menu Luxe Singapore, harks back to the traditional snacks she enjoyed as a kid to create her inspired masterpieces
In a bold move to make what is typically the sweet end of a meal stand on its own as a three‑course omakase dessert menu, Soh Hui Shan embarked on her solo venture, Catkin by Huishan, last December. It is named after the flower of the willow tree, a nod to her previous role as head pastry chef at the genre‑defying restaurant led by Nicholas Tam, where she found recognition for her immaculately plated local‑inspired creations.
Reminiscent of the snacks she had growing up, the 27‑year‑old’s desserts are hyperlocal, riffing off her memories of hawthorn candy, kueh tutu, ondeh ondeh and gua zi (meaning “melon seeds” in Mandarin). Her light‑handed and precise execution, which won critics over at Willow, is still put on full display for five days a week at the decidedly less formal concept where she is chef‑partner.
Catkin is not what you would expect from a commercial dessert bar. With Soh running the day‑to‑day operations alone (she gets some help from Cynthia Lim of Twenty Eight Cafe, of which Catkin shares the space with, and Benjamin Goh of the one‑Michelin‑starred restaurant 28 Wilkie, but for the most part, she is on her own), the ambience is personal and intimate, much like her inspiration, Dej Kewkacha’s Kyo Bar, a kaiseki‑style dessert bar in Bangkok. She is also responsible for marketing the place on social media platforms, a skill she had to learn on her own. “I had zero experience managing socials or creating content. The learning curve was definitely a steep one,” she shares.
Don't miss: Baking queens: Patisseries and dessert restaurants by female pastry chefs
Learning marketing skills might be a departure from the duties of a restaurant chef, but in hindsight, Soh’s unconventional career path would have instilled such gumption in the young chef. Drawn to the subject Food and Nutrition in school, she taught herself how to bake from watching YouTube videos at 13. Paying heed to the fire burning in her belly, she enrolled in a Diploma in Pastry & Bakery course at the At‑Sunrice GlobalChef Academy, where she dreamed about decorating cakes in hotels. It was not until her first school assignment at the now‑defunct The White Rabbit that she fell in love with the adrenaline of service.
After graduating, she emailed asking for a job at Restaurant André, a beloved two‑Michelin‑starred fine dining restaurant run by Taiwanese‑born chef André Chiang that shut its doors in 2018. Going up against another applicant, she impressed then‑head pastry chef Mohamed Al‑Matin by doing a few tasks such as the menial exercise of separating cooked rice grains to dry before they are fried to make puffed rice.
In the little more than a year at Restaurant André, she found her mentors in both Chiang and Matin, who taught her the value of discipline, time management and hard work. “Though they were extremely strict and harsh when it came to results, they put in the time to teach me the knowledge and practices I still use today,” she shares.
Crediting both chefs as people who have shaped the formative years in her career, she recounts the intense experience of being a part of the kitchen brigade. Apart from the absolute top standard that was expected of her, she remembers staying back after service till 4 am, practising her knife skills, and sometimes spending nights at the restaurant.
She fondly recalls one of the highlights of working at Restaurant André, where she followed Chiang to Taipei for the Golden Horse Awards Gala and broke down after learning that she had to use an ice cream machine she never used before. “I felt like a huge disappointment, but he took time off from his mountain of work to teach me patiently, step by step, how to operate it. I was so touched.”
In case you missed it: Off Menu Luxe Singapore, launched in partnership with UOB Private Bank, returns this August
When the restaurant finally closed, she joined the opening team for Restaurant Zén by renowned Swedish chef Björn Frantzén. There, she worked with executive chef Marcus Jernmark, who was tasked to help with the opening and shared his extensive knowledge of gastronomy. She learnt sophisticated recipes that were honed through years of R & D, nothing like what was taught at pastry school.
Two years later and ready for change, she left the fine dining kitchen to join former mentor Matin at his independent venture, Le Matin Patisserie, and got her first taste of high‑volume production at its previous outlets at Raeburn Park and in Paragon. It has since closed both spaces and moved to Ion Orchard.
Although having learnt a new set of skills at the patisserie, Soh found herself missing the rush of working in a fine dining restaurant; life as a junior sous chef at Le Matin Patisserie felt mundane and repetitive. When she got the offer from Tam, also a Restaurant Zén alumni, to be head pastry chef at Willow, she jumped at it.
Now, she is ready for the next stage of her career—adding business owner to her resume. Emboldened by the great response from guests at Willow, she wants to make her creations more accessible to the masses. It helps that the local street snacks she is inspired by are not made with premium ingredients to begin with, allowing her to keep prices reasonable. Instead, she utilises her skills acquired from fine dining institutions to elevate unassuming snacks such as her favourite kueh tutu, transformed into an all‑white cloud of rice foam topped with a quenelle of white pandan gelato over a base of desiccated coconut glazed with gula melaka.
Speaking of, Catkin recently launched its line of gelato in uncommon flavours that range from pisang rastali, the stumpy breed of bananas used to make goreng pisang, to gua zi, made from sunflower, pumpkin and melon seeds. Perhaps somewhere in the pipeline will be her first savoury dessert with caviar. She says with optimism: “It’s time to showcase my adaptability as a pastry chef and conquer a whole new dimension of flavours.”
Credits
Photography: Frenchescar Lim
Grooming: Angel Gwee using Davines and Dior Beauty
