Singaporean chain Chatterbox Express may be famous for its Hainan chicken rice, but in Hong Kong it has recently partnered with Chen’s Mapo Tofu to serve an entirely new range of chuka ryori dishes – Japanese adaptations of Chinese cuisine – such as mapo don and dan dan mien.
Chen’s Mapo Tofu is a casual offshoot of the Michelin-star Shisen Hanten in Singapore, part of a chain that was founded in the Japanese port city of Yokohama in 1958.
Yokohama’s Shisen Hanten was the first Sichuan restaurant in the city. Founding chef Chen Kenmin is widely known as the “Father of Sichuan cuisine” in Japan, while his son, Chen Kenichi, became one of the most acclaimed Iron Chefs on the long-running Japanese cooking series of the same name.
It was Kenichi who shot Shisen Hanten’s mapo tofu to fame and expanded the restaurant’s footprint all over Japan. He died in March 2023, aged 67.
His son, chef Chen Kentaro, had taken over the reins almost a decade ago and opened the restaurant’s first outpost at the Mandarin Orchard hotel in Singapore in 2014. It was awarded two-Michelin-star status in 2016, which it kept until 2023, when it lost one star.
Chen’s Mapo Tofu opened in Singapore in 2017 serving the Chen family’s signature dish. It received Michelin’s Bib Gourmand award in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
The restaurant’s name also references the origin story of mapo tofu, which can be traced to a restaurant in Sichuan dating back to 1862.
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As the story goes, the small diner was headed by a lady whose last name was also Chen. Because her face was pockmarked from measles, people referred to her as ma po – the first word referring to the disease, and po meaning old lady. Those who did not know the name of the restaurant called it Chen Mapo’s diner.
There are a few subtle differences between the dish served at Chen’s Mapo Tofu and the mapo tofu you can order at most Sichuan restaurants in Hong Kong. Most notably, the modern Chen recipe uses pork rather than the beef that is preferred in traditional Sichuan versions.
It also uses Japanese tofu, which has a silkier texture and more pronounced soy flavour than the average tofu made in China.
Chef Kenichi’s recipe also stresses the importance of pre-boiling the tofu in salted water to create a bouncier texture, while many Sichuan recipes use soy sauce as well as salt for this step.
While the Sichuan version is more complex – owing to the addition of black beans and sugar into the sauce, which add earthiness – Chen’s version is easier on the palate, as the spice level is less punchy.
Other than that, many of the ingredients are the same and both stress the importance of using garlic leaf as well as scallions in the recipe.
Chinese food? Not a fan – until he went to Chengdu and tried Sichuan fare
Chinese food? Not a fan – until he went to Chengdu and tried Sichuan fare
Apart from the mapo tofu, we also sampled Chen’s dan dan mien and the Szechwan popcorn chicken – a less intense version of laziji, or Sichuan spicy chicken – both of which were very easy on the palate and a great way to introduce the kaleidoscope of Sichuan flavours to people new to the cuisine.
Most importantly, the collaboration presents a very budget-friendly way to sample the mapo tofu of a culinary legend.