Having grown up around the restaurant, Chang was well-versed in its philosophy of doing things the right way, even when it was the hard way. In its heyday, Red House Seafood’s record sales for one night was 300kg of crabs, cooked singlehandedly by its former head chef, Hai. “This guy was fantastic. Calm as hell. In between cooking the chilli crab, he would cook the mussels and baby squid,” Chang said.
The practice of eating fried mantou with chilli crab started at Red House, according to Chang. “In the past, chilli crab was served with soft sliced bread or French loaf. Somewhere along the line, probably in the 90s, someone brought some mantou, my dad thought it would be good deep-fried, and it became a thing.”
Pao fan, the now ubiquitous dish of crispy rice served in seafood broth, was also a Red House creation, Chang said. It was introduced when the family opened its Robertson Quay outlet in 2007; the outlet closed in 2019. “There was this really good chef whom we’d hired, and he presented the dish. There was nobody else on the market doing it [at that time]. I think everyone at the table was bowled over.”