Cher Yam Tian of Palm Beach Seafood Restaurant and Roland Restaurant – and widely recognised to be the creator of Singapore’s iconic chilli crab – died on Wednesday (Feb 15). She was 90 years old.
According to Singapore Infopedia, Cher came up with the dish way back in the mid-1950s when she added bottled chili sauce, instead of her usual ingredient of tomato sauce, to a dish of stir-fried crabs.
She said in an interview that she started serving her chilli crab dish to her friends and family, which led to them telling her that she should start selling her signature creation.
So in 1956, Cher, together with husband Lim Choon Ngee, began selling the now iconic dish from a pushcart along Kallang River. Business was so good that they eventually opened a restaurant in 1962 along Upper East Coast Road and named it Palm Beach Seafood.
