Earlier this year, Chef Pang Kok Keong started his first business venture – the French deco-inspired Antoinette under his newly-formed Sugar Daddy group. The chichi café had a strong emphasis on pretty pastries, set in an equally decadent enclosure. Antoinette proved to be a hit with the yuppie crowd and Chef Pang just launched his third Antoinette outlet at the Scarlet Hotel in December this year. He comments, “Each Antoinette outlet has its own identity. I envisioned the one at Penhas Road to be Antoinette’s house, the outlet at Mandarin Gallery to be her boudoir (with the dimmer lighting and plush seats). Over at the Scarlet hotel, it’s her country house. We are opening another brand at Palais Renaissance. That will be our biggest outlet yet, and that will be her garden.”

Meeting him for the first time at his latest Antoinette outlet, Chef Pang gives the air of someone who takes prides in the details. During our interview, he got up suddenly to chide a worker who was doing some renovation and drilling work at the dining area, “Please do not do this when there are customers around,” he said. Before becoming a Sugar Daddy, Chef Pang was the renowned pastry chef of the Les Amis Group’s Canelé, responsible for introducing innovative macaroon flavours to the local palette. “Baking is a very detailed, almost scientific skill. There is a reason for every process and step and it’s really hands-on. I like the fact that you make everything from scratch, when it comes to baking. For example, as a chef, you cook the chicken, but you don’t raise the chicken from young, but for cakes, you start from the fundamentals.”

Although he started in the pastry kitchen, currently his role in his business ventures involves very little baking. “Now I am more involved in the creative aspect. I don’t just develop the sweets menu, but also the savoury menu and coming up with the menu takes a lot of energy. I also have a lot of input on how the restaurants look.”

Besides Antoinette, he also helms Pique Nique (pronounced as “picnic”), a Western bistro that specializes in American comfort food like hotdogs, burgers and the less refined cousin of the macaroon, the Whoopie Pie. In the pipeline, Chef Pang is going to launch two new concept eateries, one being an ice-cream parlour, the other focused on Chinese pastries. “I hope that I can raise the profile of Chinese pastries in Singapore. I’m thinking how great it will be to sell well-made and nicely packaged Chinese pastries at the airport terminals. It’s something uniquely Singapore. ”

He adds, “Chinese pastries, in contrast to Western ones, relies a lot more on handiwork, for Western pastries, there is more dependence on machines and techniques. It is likely I will focus more on Cantonese pastries.”

As for Singapore’s restaurant scene, Chef Pang calls it “one of the best in the world”. “If you see the lineup at Marina Bay Sands or even at our own Chef Andre Chiang , we have great chefs doing things at an international level. Singapore is so small but big names are opening here, it’s all very encouraging.”

So who is the man behind the macaroons? “I like to daydream a lot. That is usually how I come up with my restaurant concepts,” he quips. “As for hobbies, I have no time for that, although I would say building restaurants is my hobby!”