Chicken Pie Kitchen & Don Signature Crab (Chef Don Lim's Don pies)

Chicken Pie Kitchen & Don Signature Crab is the restaurant and kiosk group where the original chicken pie is baked today under the DonChef name. It was co-founded by Chef Don Lim, the founder of Don Pie (“DON: Your Personal Pie Club”, whose first shop opened at Far East Square in 2000 or 2001, depending on the source), and Chef Don Lim still appears at the kitchen’s events. When people in Singapore say “Don Pie”, “Don pies” or “Don’s chicken pie”, these are the pies they usually mean. The brand’s own tagline is “Singapore’s original Chicken Pie, since 1983”, the year Chef Don Lim dates the recipe to, and originaldon.com tells a longer history of the recipe than a guide profile can, and the brand’s own heritage site, singaporepies.com, tells the story in the kitchen’s words.

What is a Don pie like?

A Don pie is an old-school, Hainanese-style chicken pie: chunky chicken, potato and vegetables in a spiced, creamy filling, with half a hard-boiled egg tucked inside, under a golden, flaky crust. Reviewers describe the crust in different ways, from buttery and flaky to more biscuit-like, so we stick to the seller’s own phrase. The personal pie feeds one; the whole pie feeds four to six.

What should you order first?

Start with DonChef’s Original Chicken Pie, which follows the recipe Chef Don Lim dates to 1983, then try the Black Pepper Chicken Pie if you like heat. The Chicken Shepherd’s Pie puts the black pepper filling under baked mashed potato. Beef and apple pies sit at the top of the price list. The flagship on Tyrwhitt Road also serves the crab bee hoon that gives the business the second half of its name; at the kiosks, only AMK Hub sells crab as well. Sizes and prices for every pie are set out in this Don Pie menu and prices breakdown, taken from the same February 2026 printed menu we use.

The Toa Payoh question

Many people still connect Chef Don Lim with Toa Payoh. That chapter is history: after he sold the Don Pie brand around 2014 to 2015, he ran a crab bee hoon stall in a Toa Payoh North coffee shop from about 2015 and sold his pies again from Toa Payoh North Food Centre II from late 2019. Both Toa Payoh stalls have closed. In 2021 he co-founded the kitchen at 39 Tyrwhitt Road with his nephew, and that is where the pies are baked today under the DonChef name. For every step in order, donpies.com keeps a dated Don Pie timeline from 1983 to 2026. If you are in Toa Payoh today, the nearest outlet is the AMK Hub kiosk, three MRT stops north on the North-South Line, or the Tyrwhitt Road flagship in Jalan Besar.