About Us — eightysix

About eightysix

Eightysix started because I got bored of menus that never change. In kitchen slang, "eightysix" means "sold out," which is what happens when the same six items sit on a menu for a year. I wanted a dessert that behaved like the foods we grew up with, Twisties, ice bean, kaya toast, except now I have the equipment and the stubbornness to take it apart and rebuild it properly. No shortcuts, even when the troublesome route adds three extra days.

To me, eightysix is a dessert we never imagined could be a dessert. It's a non-binary kind of dessert. You could call it fusion, a mix of this and a little bit of that, but for me it represents what could be or what might have been. Even though the English isn't perfect, why not try to make it work? Science says so. It pairs well with A and B because their flavor profiles match scientifically.

I don't create things just because they look good, are presentable, or taste good. I follow the science and what works. That's why I call it non-binary. When things just seamlessly work well together, creation doesn't have to stop there. eightysix is where things end. Things are finished, things are done or sold out. We would never run out of creativity if we base our perspective on a one-dimensional look. We will blind ourselves to the possibility of a new reality.

About the baker

In 2018, I started writing a book. Types Of Bakers. Got four chapters in. Then I stopped writing and started baking wedding cakes instead. Made sense at the time — you can't eat a manuscript, but you can get paid for a three-tier vanilla sponge with sugar flowers. So that's what I did. Client calls, mood boards, "can you make it more like the Pinterest photo," the same six flavors on repeat because that's what sells at a wedding. It paid. It also had nothing to do with why I wanted to write a book about bakers in the first place.

Somewhere in there, the pandemic hit. Everything stopped. And underneath the shutdown, something else stopped too — my own discipline. I wasn't executing. I wasn't building anything. I had the idea buried in me, but not the structure to carry it.

So I lost time. I lost momentum. I lost the version of myself that thought four chapters and a decent instinct for cake would be enough.

What I gained, I didn't see until later: actual industry reps. Technique that only comes from doing the repetitive, unglamorous version of the job first. And discipline I didn't have in 2018 — the kind you only get from being forced to sit still and actually look at what you're doing, instead of just doing it.

That's when the shift happened. Not back to the book. Forward, past it. High-end pastry technique doesn't have to live behind a $400 tasting menu and a dress code. It can live in a home kitchen, four guests at a time, dessert as the whole point instead of the thing that comes after the "real" meal.

That's eightysix. Not a pivot. The thing the book was actually about, built with hands that finally knew what they were doing.

I'm one guy, one kitchen, capped at four seats — and I'm building the only dessert-focused, home-based private dining concept in Singapore. If you want to see what four chapters and a five-year detour turn into, I'll show you.