The Original Don is Chef Don Lim, who founded Don Pie at Far East Square in 2000. His chicken pie recipe dates, by his own account, to 1983 and the Hewlett-Packard staff cafeteria. After selling the Don Pie brand around 2014-2015 and cooking crab in Toa Payoh, he co-founded Chicken Pie Kitchen & Don Signature Crab at 39 Tyrwhitt Road in 2021, where the pies are baked today under the DonChef name.
This is the story of one recipe and the man who made it. We are the kitchen that bakes it today: Chicken Pie Kitchen & Don Signature Crab, at 39 Tyrwhitt Road in Jalan Besar, Singapore. When we say “the original Don”, we mean Chef Don Lim (林德發), the founder of Don Pie and co-founder of our kitchen. When we say “the original Don pie”, we mean his Original Chicken Pie, baked today by that kitchen as DonChef’s Original Chicken Pie.
We have tried to tell this story the way a careful historian would. Where published sources disagree on a year, we give the range and say so. Where we do not know something, we leave it out. The dated version, with every source, is on our timeline.
Before the pie: a Hainanese kitchen on Purvis Street
Chef Don’s father was a first-generation Hainanese immigrant who ran a chicken rice stall on Purvis Street. Our own records place the stall in the 1960s; another family account gives its years as 1955 to 1972.
That is where the cooking starts. Purvis Street has long been associated with Hainanese food in Singapore, and Chef Don grew up in a family that fed people for a living. We tell that part of the story more fully in The Hainanese thread, and the family keeps its own account of the stall and of Chef Don’s father, Lim Tee Kheng, on its heritage site.
1983: a chicken pie for a staff cafeteria
Chef Don’s chicken pie recipe begins, in his own account, in 1983. He was baking pastries for the staff cafeteria of a major technology company, Hewlett-Packard, in what he calls “the HP days at Depot Road”.
A staff cafeteria is a demanding first audience. The same people come back every working day, and they notice when something changes. The recipe was developed and improved there, one batch at a time. That is the root of our tagline, “Singapore’s original Chicken Pie, since 1983”: the date belongs to the recipe, not to a shop.
What we cannot give you is a document from 1983 itself. We explain exactly what “since 1983” does and does not claim in What “since 1983” means.
2000: DON, Your Personal Pie Club
Chef Don opened his first shop, DON: Your Personal Pie Club, at Far East Square in the Raffles Place area. Our About page gives the year as 2000; the pie club website gives 2001. People shortened the name, as people do. Some called it Don; others called it Don Pie.
The business grew into a restaurant across the street at China Square Central, 20 Cross Street. A food blogger who visited in October 2008 recorded a whole chicken pie there at $18, and described the egg, the vegetables and the flaky crust that our customers still recognise. More outlets followed in the 2000s. For a closer look at those two addresses, donpies.com has written up the first shops at Far East Square and China Square.
The recipe from those years is the one we use now. In the words of our own product notes, it is “the same recipe since the China Square days”.
Around 2014-2015: letting go of a name
Around 2014-2015, Chef Don sold the Don Pie brand. Our About page says 2014; some published accounts say November 2015. The brand has changed hands since then.
A name can be sold. A cook’s hands, memory and habits cannot. For several years after the sale, Chef Don did not sell his pies at all. He cooked something else.
We will not say more about the brand’s later owners. That is their story, not ours. Ours is simpler: the recipe stayed with the man who wrote it.
The Toa Payoh years: crab bee hoon, then pies again
From about 2015, Chef Don ran Don Signature Crab, a crab bee hoon stall in a coffee shop at Blk 206 Toa Payoh North. Food bloggers who visited date the opening to March 2015, and by 2017 they were writing about his crab bee hoon soup. The crab dishes began as family cooking and became a menu of their own.
In 2019 the pies came back. Under the name Don’s Pie & Cake, Chef Don sold his original chicken pies again, alongside his crab, at Toa Payoh Food Centre II, 1008A Toa Payoh North. A food blogger who visited in September 2020 found both on the menu.
Both Toa Payoh stalls have since closed. There is no Toa Payoh outlet today, and we say that plainly because people still search for one. The full chapter is in The Toa Payoh years.
2021: Tyrwhitt Road, and a third generation
During the pandemic, Chef Don asked his nephew, Kelvin Leong, to help him revive the business. In 2021 they opened Chicken Pie Kitchen & Don Signature Crab at 39 Tyrwhitt Road, opposite Jalan Besar Stadium. The pies and the crab moved into a restaurant of their own.
This is where DonChef’s pies are made today. Our pastry dough is made in-house and rolled on a dough sheeter. The pies are baked in small batches in deck ovens. We keep a strict zero overnight pies policy. In 2022 we began delivering pies across the island, and our takeaway kiosks now stand in AMK Hub, Wisma Atria, White Sands and Tiong Bahru Plaza.
A food writer who visited in 2022 said one bite took them back to their childhood. That is the reaction we hope for, and the reason we do not change the recipe for fashion.
Today: one kitchen, five outlets, one recipe
DonChef’s Original Chicken Pie is baked at 39 Tyrwhitt Road and sold at our flagship and four kiosks, plus our official ordering sites. Opening hours for each one are kept on the list of Don Pie outlets in Singapore. We have no franchise outlets and we supply our pies to no one else. That is the practical meaning of “original” on this site, explained in full in what “original” means for the Don pie: the founder’s recipe, made by the founder’s kitchen, sold only by us. Chef Don Lim still appears at the kitchen’s events.
If you want to check a pie against that standard, use our seven signs of the original. If you want one in your hands, here is where to get the original Don pie.
What we can prove, and what we cannot
A heritage story is only as good as its weakest date, so here is ours, laid out plainly.
- 1983 is Chef Don’s own dating of his recipe. It is consistent with his years at the Hewlett-Packard cafeteria, but we hold no 1983 document.
- 2000 or 2001 for the first shop at Far East Square. Our records say 2000; the pie club website says 2001.
- 2014 or 2015 for the sale of the Don Pie brand. Different published accounts give different years, so we say “around 2014-2015”.
- 2015 for Don Signature Crab in Toa Payoh North. Our own timeline says 2014; bloggers who visited say March 2015.
- 2019 for the return of the pies at 1008A Toa Payoh North, and 2021 for Tyrwhitt Road. Both are well documented.
The independent record starts early. Blog posts from 2006 and 2008 describe Chef Don’s pies at Far East Square and China Square, with the egg, peas, carrots and a flaky crust. Food writers covered the Toa Payoh crab stall from 2017 and the Tyrwhitt Road kitchen from 2022. You can read that coverage yourself on our press and mentions page.
Who is telling this story?
This site is published by the team at Chicken Pie Kitchen & Don Signature Crab, Chef Don’s own business. We are not a neutral party and we do not pretend to be. That is why we link to outside sources wherever we can, and why we would rather leave a gap than fill it with a guess. Read more about this site.