Does a restaurant need to go viral to survive? Red House Seafood’s Christopher Chang hopes not

As Red House Seafood marks its 50th anniversary, Christopher Chang reflects on resisting the pull of social media while staying true to the values that built his family’s restaurant.

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Fifty-somethings know it: That brutal moment when you realise you cannot – and should not – try to keep up with the younger faces in any given room. Who cares if you’re not on TikTok? Literally no one. “Six-seven” was the year your older brother was born, and if someone mentions dumpling lasagna, you might hurt your back wondering if it’s available at Din Tai Fung.

That’s kind of how Christopher Chang feels as the steward of Red House Seafood, the restaurant his family has run for 50 years. Chang may be 43, but he speaks with the weary knowingness of someone trying to keep a heritage business alive in an algorithm-addled world. There was a time, if you ask him, when a business could get by on integrity and hard work. These days, staying relevant in Singapore’s cutthroat F&B industry calls for a lot more.

“The F&B game is constantly shifting. It now revolves around PR and getting foot traffic into your outlet,” he said, as we spoke at Red House Seafood’s sprawling restaurant at Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel Singapore. “Our strengths are that we are genuine and honest, and we work hard. But how do you talk about that? It’s not a very sexy topic.”

One perk of reaching middle age, though, is having lived long enough to know that staying true to who you are has its merits. Trends are exactly that – viral today, forgotten tomorrow. To avoid being distracted from his restaurant’s heritage and long-term goals, Chang has stripped his phone of social media apps. “If you’re not careful and follow too many of these trends [on social media], it may inevitably alter your perception and how you drive the business,” he said.

What he has embraced instead is a more casual, natural approach to winning over a new generation of diners while keeping things interesting and affordable for existing customers. In recent years, Red House Seafood has worked on collaborations with other culinary brands, including a White Rabbit dim sum menu in August 2025 and a festive takeaway menu with Meat Co and Chalk Farm in December 2025. To mark its 50th anniversary this year, the restaurant also hosted a six-course menu with Filipino food personality Lechon Diva in April, featuring dishes such as crabmeat and Iberico pork lumpia, and lechon with chorizo and crab fat glutinous rice stuffing.

A FAMILY AFFAIR

Chang’s grandfather bought Red House Seafood from its original owners in 1976, about eight months after it opened. “The story that’s been told to me is that everyone in our family – my grandparents, parents, aunties and uncles – emptied their bank accounts [to buy the restaurant], so everyone’s livelihood really depended on it,” he recalled. “My grandfather was a luggage distributor, and I think this was an opportunity for him and his family to own something, so they decided to go ahead with it. They didn’t think it was going to be a home run or anything. I think everyone was genuinely worried.”

In its day, the row of colonial seafront bungalows along Upper East Coast Road was Singapore’s premier seafood strip, where other well-known restaurants, including Palm Beach, Long Beach and Hua Yu Wee – the only remaining establishment there – got their start. By 1985, Red House moved to the then-new UDMC Seafood Centre in East Coast Park, where it remained for 30 years.

“We were there from 1985 to 2015, and a lot of my school holidays were spent there cycling. When I was 16 or 18, I actually enjoyed working in the kitchen, helping out with dishwashing, ferrying dishes and all the little manual tasks, but there was no intention or pressure for me to join the business at any point,” he said.

After university, Chang pursued a career at Credit Suisse in New York, leaving during the 2008 financial crisis. In 2012, he bought into Geylang Claypot Rice with a childhood friend, thinking the business would take care of itself with a manager at the helm. Chang is still a managing partner. “I genuinely did not expect to do this. I was planning to go back [to work] and do something else,” he said.

In 2014, his mother suggested that he join the family business. “I think she was more upset because I was in shorts and slippers every day. But that was just the practical wear for Geylang,” he laughed. “And you know, when your mum asks, you just feel like, okay, let’s give it a shot.”

HOW TO EVOLVE AN ICON

Having grown up around the restaurant, Chang was well-versed in its philosophy of doing things the right way, even when it was the hard way. In its heyday, Red House Seafood’s record sales for one night was 300kg of crabs, cooked singlehandedly by its former head chef, Hai. “This guy was fantastic. Calm as hell. In between cooking the chilli crab, he would cook the mussels and baby squid,” Chang said.

The practice of eating fried mantou with chilli crab started at Red House, according to Chang. “In the past, chilli crab was served with soft sliced bread or French loaf. Somewhere along the line, probably in the 90s, someone brought some mantou, my dad thought it would be good deep-fried, and it became a thing.”

Pao fan, the now ubiquitous dish of crispy rice served in seafood broth, was also a Red House creation, Chang said. It was introduced when the family opened its Robertson Quay outlet in 2007; the outlet closed in 2019. “There was this really good chef whom we’d hired, and he presented the dish. There was nobody else on the market doing it [at that time]. I think everyone at the table was bowled over.”

The intention from the start was simple. “You just make sure you have fresh seafood, don’t cut corners and try to provide decent service. And that’s the philosophy that I’ve continued,” Chang explained.

What seems to bother him is the gap between what Red House Seafood is at heart and what the world wants today. A whole generation of younger Singaporeans may never have heard of Red House Seafood, in large part because it does not play the social media game. Where does a half-century-old restaurant sit in an age when a brand has to stand out in a vast sea of other brands online?

This is the kind of reckoning that middle-aged businesses – and people – find themselves contending with. Yet, we all soon realise that your appeal doesn’t vanish so much as evolve with time. When you’ve worked and gotten good at something over 50 years, there remains undeniable value in who you’ve become and what you have to offer. You just don’t get to decide who sees that value in you. And so, Chang constantly returns to his family’s blueprint to keep himself and the business in check.

“I always say the real test is a lot of people coming through your doors every day over a sustained period, and I think the team has done an excellent job. We’re not out to make a killing, and I think this business is really run as honestly as possible. So it’s nice when people come back, and to get really nice reviews during Chinese New Year, for example, when a lot of Chinese restaurants get blasted. That’s very encouraging.”

Still, Chang knows that, in time, his restaurant must face its own mortality. “I fear that we will lose our place because we are just not out there [on social media]. Just doing consistently good work… I don’t know. Is that still relevant today?”

He is not exactly keen on having his son take over the business either. “I definitely don’t want my kid to go into it,” he said. “But I mean, you never know. He could grow up to suddenly realise that it’s actually something he doesn’t mind doing or has an affinity for.”

“I don’t think I gave my parents any hope when I was younger,” he reflected. “When conversations revolved around the business, they would say, ‘You guys have all grown up. Let’s close it at some point.’ I think they always thought it would be nicer to end on a high note than be one of those old restaurants that just drags on till it’s painful.

“But lo and behold, we’re still here.”

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