Originals matter in food because a recipe carries a cook's judgement, not just a list of ingredients. An original is the version that comes directly from that cook or kitchen. Imitation is not wrongdoing: most good food began as someone learning from someone else. What matters is honesty about where a dish comes from, so customers can choose with their eyes open.
What makes a dish “original”?
A dish is original when it comes directly from the cook or kitchen that created it. The ingredients are the least of it. Anyone can list chicken, potato, carrot, peas and an egg. What an original carries is judgement: how large to cut the chicken, how thick to make the gravy, how long to bake, when a batch is not good enough to sell. Those decisions live in a person’s hands and habits. They are what you are buying when you buy an original.
That is why, in our own case, we define “the original Don pie” in terms of the cook and the kitchen rather than the ingredient list: the cook is Chef Don Lim, who created the recipe in 1983, and the kitchen is ours at 39 Tyrwhitt Road, which bakes it today as DonChef. Our full standard is on What “original” means to us.
Is imitation in food a bad thing?
No. Imitation is how food culture works. Every cook learns by copying someone. The Singapore chicken pie itself is an imitation of British pies that local cooks made their own, and nobody would call it a lesser dish for that. Hawker food is full of dishes learned at one stall and perfected at another.
The problem is never that a dish resembles another. The problem, when there is one, is when a customer is led to believe they are buying something they are not. That is a question of honesty, not of recipes.
What is the difference between a recipe and a name?
A recipe and a name are different kinds of thing, and confusing them causes most of the arguments about “originals”.
A recipe is knowledge. It lives with the person who developed it and the people they teach. It can be written down, but the written version is never the whole of it.
A name is a label attached to a business or a product. Names can be registered, bought, sold and licensed. When a name changes hands, the recipe and the cook do not necessarily go with it. (If the names in our own story are a puzzle, donpies.com sorts out what Don Pie is actually called and which spelling means what.)
Our own story includes exactly this. Chef Don Lim sold the Don Pie brand around 2014-2015. He kept his recipe and his skill, and when he returned to pies in 2019 it was with the recipe he had been developing since 1983. We say nothing here about anyone else’s name or rights. We simply describe our own position: the recipe and the cook are here.
Why does provenance matter to customers?
Provenance matters to customers for three practical reasons.
- Memory. People who loved a dish years ago want the same dish, and the same dish usually means the same cook or the same kitchen.
- Consistency. A kitchen that has made one recipe for decades has habits that keep it steady. That is not guaranteed elsewhere.
- Trust. Knowing who made your food, and where, tells you who is answerable if it is not right.
None of these makes an original automatically better. A newer pie can be excellent. But if you are looking for a particular cook’s food, provenance is the only test that answers the question you are actually asking.
How can you judge an “original” claim fairly?
You can judge an “original” claim fairly by asking for things that can be checked, and by being suspicious of things that cannot.
- Ask who. Is the original cook, or their own business, still involved? Is that stated openly?
- Ask what is dated. A recipe, a shop or a company? See our piece on what “since 1983” means.
- Ask for the outside record. Are there independent reviews, old blog posts or articles that describe the same food over time?
- Ask where it is sold. Does the business say which outlets are its own? Does it franchise or supply others?
- Notice what is not said. A claim of “first” or “only” with no evidence is a warning sign, including when we are the ones tempted to make it.
Why we will never call another pie a fake
We will never call another pie a fake, because it is not our place and it would not be true. Other bakers in Singapore make chicken pies in their own way, some with a long history of their own, and many of them are good. A pie that is not ours is simply a different pie.
Our job is narrower and more useful: to tell you clearly what our pie is, who makes it and where to find it. If you want to check a pie in your hand, use the seven signs of the original. If you want to taste ours, here is where to get the original Don pie.
Originals and the people who keep them
An original survives not by being frozen in time, but by being made, carefully and often, by people who know where it came from. In our case that means the DonChef kitchen that Chef Don Lim and his nephew co-founded at Tyrwhitt Road in 2021, and the team that works in it. Chef Don Lim’s recipe is baked there in small batches every day, which is how a recipe stays an original rather than becoming a memory. The craft habits behind that are collected in our craft notes on the old-school chicken pie.
