A homesick craving inspired her to launch a Singaporean supper club and food brand in London

It was a comforting bowl of bak chor mee (minced meat noodle) that changed it all. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Megan Tan was living in London and working as a finance lawyer. With the city in lockdown, her homesick roommate was craving local Singaporean food.

“It was her birthday and we couldn’t go anywhere. I wanted to do something thoughtful for her, so I asked her what her favourite dish was. It was bak chor mee, so I Googled a recipe and made it for the first time,” Tan, 30, recalled.

That simple act of cooking for a friend was enough to spark a realisation in Tan for two reasons. “First, it was the feeling of making something with my own two hands. And second, it was making something that I love so much, and that she loved so much too, and the joy that it brought to the both of us.”

In fact, Tan enjoyed the experience of cooking for others so much that for the rest of the lockdown, she started opening up orders for dishes such as wonton mee, Hokkien mee and carrot cake on her Instagram. During the weekends, she would cook the dishes and cycle out to deliver them herself. “I had a lot of fun and I think it gave me a lot of meaning and human connection at a time when it was very short in supply,” Tan, a self-professed extrovert, reflected.

Eventually, she launched Homi Kitchen, a supper club run out of her apartment where she serves Singaporean dishes to guests. What started as a nostalgic dinner for her social bubble soon evolved into something bigger. Beyond the supper club, Tan is on a mission to create a brand that can make “Singaporean flavours easily accessible on supermarket shelves for everyone in the UK”, said the young entrepreneur.

In early 2025, Tan went on to launch her first product – the Giga Chicken Rice Chilli sauce, a flavour-packed condiment inspired by one Singapore’s most beloved dishes, with more products already in the pipeline.

FROM LAW TO LOCAL FLAVOURS

Born and raised in Singapore, Tan grew up in a three-generation household in Serangoon, with her grandmother, an avid cook, cooking Teochew dishes every day for the family. “She’s the queen of the kitchen. I would try to help, but quite often I would be making things worse,” Tan recalled with a laugh.

It wasn’t until she studied law at the University of Oxford in the UK that she began experimenting with cooking herself. “I missed food from home, and the funny thing is, I didn’t have a kitchen in my college accommodation. I only had a rice cooker, and I had all my sauces and ingredients in a box.”

She made do with the limited setup, cooking Asian comfort dishes such as chicken curry and katsu curry in that one pot. She often invited friends to gather in her room for dinner, who brought over their own bowls and cutlery.

After completing her legal training back in Singapore, Tan made the jump to move to London full-time. “Within the legal industry, London is one of the big hot spots for top-notch firms and teams. It is also a very international, cosmopolitan city,” she said of the move.

A few years into her legal career, Tan quickly realised that her true passion laid elsewhere. “What sparked the greatest joy for me was being in the consumer retail space, and seeing my customers really enjoying my food and being grateful for the comfort that a simple bowl of noodles brought them,” said Tan.

Homi Kitchen was a way for her to indulge in her love for cooking while balancing a demanding day job. “Why I started the supper club was to also test my theory that there’s a growing interest in Singaporean food in the UK. It was a way to meet people who weren’t necessarily from Singapore or Malaysia to find out how they know about the cuisine and why they were curious enough to try it,” Tan explained.

For her very first supper club, Tan whipped up a Hainanese chicken rice feast. Later on, the menus featured other Singaporean hawker favourites such as carrot cake, wonton mee and even a chilli crab and black pepper crab session. Seats are usually priced around £25 (S$42). At the table, “there was always a mix of nationalities, which is reflective of life in London,” said Tan.

Despite the success of the supper club, Tan knew that if she were to leave her job, it would not be to continue hosting private dinners. Instead, she had bigger ambitions.

“Here in London, we already have a growing number of Singaporean and Malaysian restaurants. We have Singapulah, which still has long queues months after opening, and we’ve got Old Chang Kee as well, so I don’t think London necessarily needs another restaurant,” said Tan. “I think what the UK is lacking is authentic Singaporean flavours on grocery shelves.”

From her very first supper club session, where she served Hainanese chicken rice, Tan was already toying with the idea of selling the accompanying chilli sauce she had made from scratch. Over time, she used each supper club as a testing ground, gathering feedback from her diners.

“I wanted to get a good sense of what would be a great product that people actually want,” she said. “By the time I left my job, I had a very clear idea of what the product would be and the kind of people who would be interested in the brand.”

COOKING UP A BRAND

With the Giga Chilli Sauce, Tan wants to bridge the gap between home-cooked meals and dining out at a restaurant. The condiment is meant to help home cooks add interesting, familiar flavours to their dishes with minimal effort.

Tan’s customers have been creative in the way they use the sauce too. Beyond pairing it with chicken rice, they have slathered it on sandwiches or stirred it into their takeaway pho from the nearby Vietnamese restaurant. At one of Homi Kitchen’s pop-up events, Tan even created a “chicken rice cocktail” in the form of a spicy margarita with the chilli sauce as a base, in collaboration with a bar in Camden market.

Customers interested in the Giga Chilli Sauce can currently purchase it online on Homi Kitchen’s website. The condiment is also stocked at grocers, food courts and delis such as Raya at Borough Market, Eat 17 on Orford Road, Polhill Farm Shop at London Road and Harvest E1 on Brick Lane.

The name Homi Kitchen – a playful twist on “home” that also means “homie”, as in friend – reflects Tan’s dual vision for the brand. “As I started out as a homerun supper club, I wanted people to feel at home with the brand. It’s also a reminder to myself that my focus is also on getting my products into other people’s homes.”

The brand wants to share the “crazy rich flavours of Singapore" beyond its shores, as its tagline encapsulates. And for Tan, the chilli sauce is just the beginning. “Right now, it’s just chilli sauce, but long-term, the other products I have in mind are stuff like ready made char kway teow that you can pop into the microwave,” Tan elaborated. “Of course, it will never be as good as going to your favourite store in Singapore, but my goal is to get as close as humanly and to fill that gap for someone who misses local food, or someone who is curious about the cuisine.”

Tan is already working on Homi Kitchen’s next condiment, the Hei Hei Black Pepper Sauce, slated to launch soon. “At my black pepper and chilli crab supper club, some of the guests loved the black pepper sauce so much that they asked if I was going to start selling it,” shared Tan. “I started looking into it and making the sauce for people to try at my events, putting them on things like tater tots just to get people to see it as something different and seeing how it lands. People really loved the flavour.”

FINDING PURPOSE

Giving up a prestigious career in law to pursue an uncharted path is a bold move. “Growing up in Asia, and maybe especially in my generation, you are brought up to study hard to secure a good, stable job for the rest of your life,” said Tan, who attended Raffles Girls School and later Raffles Institution in Singapore.

“Reflecting on my younger years, part of why I chased a law career was because my friends were doing so,” Tan reflected. “But as objectively desirable I knew a law career is for many people, eventually I had to accept that I would never be 100 per cent happy.”

Stepping into entrepreneurship is “unfamiliar territory” for her family, who do not come from a business background. While her parents were initially worried she was making a rash decision, they supported her wholeheartedly.

Tan makes regular trips back to Singapore to spend time with her family. Her go-to dish when she’s home? A comforting bowl of bak chor mee.

Back in London, Tan continues to host supper club sessions while developing new products for Homi Kitchen. In June, she hosted two sold-out events in collaboration with Hong Kong milk tea brand Chadong. On the menu were dishes such as Hei Hei Pepper Pork Belly, Hainanese Chicken Rice and Popiah, while Chadong contributed milk bread prawn toast, lychee and lime granita and Hong Kong French toast ice cream bars.

Despite the uncertainties that lie with entrepreneurship, Tan has found a sense of purpose in building something of her own. “Whatever the outcome, I can say that I already find this journey meaningful,” she reflected. “This is something I intrinsically want to do. No one needs to tell me that I’m doing a good job, or that it’s the right thing to do. It still feels right for me."