Tai Cheong Bakery (泰昌餅家)

Tai Cheong Bakery opened on Lyndhurst Terrace in Hong Kong's Central district in 1954, founded by the uncle of the man who would make the shop famous: egg-tart maker Au Yeung, who inherited the business and, drawing on techniques from earlier work in hotel bakeries, developed the shop's own cookie-style shortcrust for its egg tarts rather than the flakier puff-pastry crust more common elsewhere in the city.

The tart's reputation crossed from neighborhood favorite to citywide institution largely through one regular customer: Chris Patten, Hong Kong's last British colonial governor, became known for frequenting the original Lyndhurst outlet, and his public praise for the tarts helped cement Tai Cheong's status as one of the city's most historic bakeries. The shop still bakes its tarts to that original cookie-crust recipe.

The business has since licensed its name and recipes abroad — a Singapore operation launched with pop-up counters at Takashimaya in March and May 2016 before opening a permanent counter that July, then a full cha chaan teng-style outlet in Holland Village that November — carrying the Hong Kong bakery's founding craft, the cookie-crust egg tart, onto menus built around Hong Kong-style café classics more broadly. The Singapore operation, run through a partnership with Food People Pte Ltd and the original Hong Kong shop, describes its own approach as dishes "inspired by old Hong Kong classics" and reworked with a modern twist, while the tart recipe itself is presented as the one constant carried over unchanged from Lyndhurst Terrace.