By then, he had sunk a total of "more than $100,000" into the biz at both locations. I could not get a work permit for my wife, who is Malaysian, and I didn’t want outsiders to help me ’cos then they would know my recipe, so I closed the stall after one month,” he says. Due to the poor location and business, it closed shop after a couple of months and relocated to a kopitiam stall in Bedok, where there were more customers.ĭespite brisk business at the new location, that stall too was short-lived. His hae mee was modelled after the one at Beach Road Prawn Noodle House, his favourite, though he admits he couldn’t quite replicate the taste. In 2014, Xiao Ann opened casual standalone prawn noodle eatery Da Tou Xia in a shophouse unit in Aljunied with a partner. While it would be easier to work at a prawn mee stall to learn the ropes, according to Xiao Ann, the popular and established ones would not take on apprentices. įor months, he went around Singapore eating hae mee, secretly observing hawkers to see how the dish was prepared and attempted to replicate the recipe by experimentation. I also felt it was easier to sell prawn noodles than cai png ‘cos you don’t have to offer such a wide variety of dishes,” Xiao Ann, 37, tells 8days.sg. He later ran his own cai png stall for a couple years before deciding to start a prawn noodle biz in 2014 despite not knowing anything about hae mee. When Xiao Ann (right in pic) came to Singapore in 2007 aged 22, he landed his first job working at an economic rice stall.