Don Pie at Far East Square and China Square: where it began

Before Toa Payoh, before Tyrwhitt Road, there was the CBD. Don Pie was a lunchtime pie for office workers, and the brand’s own tagline on its relaunched pie club site still talks about “Raffles Place’s chicken pies”. This page covers the first shops.

Where did Don Pie start?

At Far East Square, the conserved block of shophouses and lanes between Raffles Place and Telok Ayer. It was opened by Chef Don Lim, who went on to co-found Chicken Pie Kitchen & Don Signature Crab, where the pies are baked today under the DonChef name. The first shop was called “DON: Your Personal Pie Club”, a name built around the idea of a pie that was yours alone: the personal pie. The brand’s About page dates the opening to 2000; its pie club site says it was established in 2001.

What was China Square Central?

As the business grew, it moved into a bigger space across the street at China Square Central, and became a restaurant rather than just a counter. A food blogger who visited in 2008 gave the address as 20 Cross Street, #01-34/35/36. The blog posts from 2008 and 2012 are, unsurprisingly, mostly about the pies.

How much did a Don pie cost back then?

The same 2008 post listed a whole pie at $18, or $4.60 a quarter. A 2012 post gave the same $18 for a whole pie. For comparison, a whole Original Chicken Pie is $33.80 on the February 2026 menu. Neither early post gave a price for a single personal pie. The full table is on our price history page.

Why do people remember the CBD pie so well?

A pie is a perfect office lunch: it travels, it is warm, it fills you up and you can eat it at your desk. For a generation of CBD workers, a Don pie was part of the week, and part of a wider old-school chicken pie culture in Singapore of neighbourhood bakeries and family pies. The relaunched pie club site leans on exactly that memory, and the brand’s product page says the recipe is “the same recipe since the China Square days”.

What happened to the first shops?

Around 2014 to 2015, Chef Don Lim sold the Don Pie brand, and with that sale the CBD chapter of the story closed. Directories and maps still show some old Don Pie addresses from that period. They are not where Chef Don’s pies are sold today, and some are marked closed.

We do not track which businesses have used the name since, and we make no comment on them. Our focus is the founder’s pies, which DonChef’s team now bakes at Tyrwhitt Road.

Where is the closest Don pie to Raffles Place today?

There is no current CBD outlet. From Raffles Place, the Tiong Bahru Plaza kiosk is three stops west on the East West Line (Tanjong Pagar, Outram Park, Tiong Bahru), and the Wisma Atria kiosk is at Orchard on the North South Line. For an office order, an advance order for delivery is often easier; see how to order, and for quantities and timing, donpieshop.com’s guide to pies for office catering.