Toa Payoh: a heartland town, and why its food sticks in the memory

You cannot really understand why people still type “don pie toa payoh” without understanding Toa Payoh itself. It is the kind of town that attaches memories to food. A pie bought at a food centre here in 2020 is remembered as a Toa Payoh pie, even though the recipe was born in 1983 and is now baked in Jalan Besar.

What is Toa Payoh?

Toa Payoh is a residential new town in central Singapore. According to the National Heritage Board’s Roots.gov.sg, the Housing and Development Board (HDB) developed it in the 1960s on land that had been a Malay kampong and vegetable farms. It was Singapore’s second new town after Queenstown, and the first new town built entirely by HDB.

Where does the name come from?

“Toa Payoh” is generally explained as Hokkien for “big swamp”: toa for big, payoh for swamp. The low, marshy ground had to be prepared before the blocks could go up. An older Chinese name for part of the area is recorded as Ang Chiang San, sometimes glossed as a burial hill, a reminder of what the land was used for before the town.

Why is Toa Payoh a landmark town?

Toa Payoh was planned as a complete town, not just a housing estate. Roots.gov.sg notes that it was the first new town with its own communal facilities: a town garden, a community plaza, a library and a sports stadium. That idea, that a town should have its own centre, became a template for later HDB towns.

A few facts that show how central the town has been:

• 1972: Queen Elizabeth II toured Toa Payoh, a sign of how much the town was held up as a model of public housing.
• 2002: HDB moved its headquarters to Toa Payoh, to HDB Hub in Toa Payoh Central.
• 2002: Toa Payoh Bus Interchange opened inside HDB Hub as Singapore’s first air-conditioned bus interchange.

Other landmarks include Toa Payoh Town Park with its viewing tower, Toa Payoh Stadium and swimming complex, and the town’s mosaic dragon playground, which has become one of the best-loved images of heartland Singapore.

How do you get around Toa Payoh?

The town is served by Toa Payoh (NS19) and Braddell (NS18) on the North South Line, with Caldecott (TE9) on the Thomson-East Coast Line and other stations around its fringes. For the Don pie story, Braddell is the station that matters: both stalls run by Don Pie founder Chef Don Lim were in Toa Payoh North, the side of town closest to it.

What is Toa Payoh’s food culture like?

Toa Payoh eats the way most of heartland Singapore eats: at coffee shops on the ground floor of HDB blocks and at hawker centres and food centres. The best known is probably Toa Payoh Lorong 8 Market & Food Centre at 210 Lorong 8 Toa Payoh, which food guides return to again and again. The food centre at 1008A Toa Payoh North, Toa Payoh Food Centre II, serves the workers of the light-industrial estate nearby.

This is the world Don’s pies lived in from 2019 to 2021. A pie at a food centre is a different thing from a pie in a CBD shop. It is bought with kopi, eaten on a stool, carried home to the void deck in a box. That might be why the Toa Payoh chapter is remembered so fondly, out of all proportion to how short it was.

Where does Toa Payoh fit in the Don pie story?

• About 2015: Chef Don Lim opens Don Signature Crab in a coffee shop at Blk 206 Toa Payoh North.
• Late 2019: his pies return at Toa Payoh Food Centre II, as Don’s Pie & Cake.
• 2021: he moves to 39 Tyrwhitt Road, and the Toa Payoh stalls close.

Read the full Toa Payoh story, browse the Don Pie Toa Payoh hub, or if you are hungry right now, see how to get a Don pie from Toa Payoh.