Heritage restaurants in Singapore: Ananda Bhavan serves up quality food from the heart

It’s not every day that you get hit by shrapnel from a bomb and live to tell the tale. But this happened to a service staff member at heritage restaurant Ananda Bhavan during the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945 while he was working at its original Ellison Building store.

Today, this anecdote is still being passed down through the generations of staff at the Indian restaurant, which began operations in 1924.

In an age when eateries open and close in Singapore at a rapid clip, a handful of heritage restaurants have kept the lights on for decades — some of them older than independent Singapore.

In the lead-up to National Day, we speak to the people behind three heritage restaurants here, and ask them what’s kept them successful over the years, how things have changed, and about their hopes and plans.

This is the first instalment where we speak to Viren Ettikan, the chief executive of Ananda Bhavan, Singapore’s oldest Indian vegetarian restaurant.

We also visit Ka-Soh and Warong Nasi Pariaman, both age-old institutions in their respective communities, known for dishing up comforting fare.

Ananda Bhavan has been in operation for 98 years.

Viren, who is also the grandson of founder Kulanthaivelu Muthusamy Kaunder, tells us that his family used to live in the unit above the original store at Ellison Building, which lies at the junction of Bukit Timah Road and Selegie Road.

It had to move out of the building in 2018 owing to the construction of the North-South Corridor, which will connect Singapore’s northern region to the city.

The heritage restaurant has five outlets, four in Little India and one at Changi Business Park. Its store at 58 Serangoon Road is the oldest.

Viren’s late father and uncle took over the business after his grandfather’s demise.

The 38-year-old tells us that his late uncle K Ramachandra was “very passionate about automation, technology and fusing it with the business”.

Ramachandra encouraged automation in the kitchen to improve productivity, and in 1996, introduced a self-service ordering system, which was relatively uncommon in Indian restaurants then.

To this day, the restaurant’s openness to technology is evident — it rolled out a robot waiter at its Syed Alwi Road branch last year.

Viren, who joined the business in 2009 after serving in the army, says Ananda Bhavan has relied primarily on word-of-mouth recommendations and hardly does mass marketing.

He believes customers return because of its sincerity and dedication to quality. He says: “We understand what the customers want and, though ingredients can be expensive at times, we don’t take shortcuts.”

“You cannot cheat customers because they know the taste. If there’s anything wrong with the food, they can tell,” Viren adds.

That’s also why he’s put in place feedback channels on platforms such as messaging service WhatsApp, so that customers may provide Ananda Bhavan with suggestions on improving its dishes.

The restaurant also keeps tabs on the latest food trends and recently introduced truffle masala thosai at its 24-hour Syed Alwi branch to appeal to the younger generation. The dish was introduced in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic to bring in more Singaporeans, since tourist traffic nosedived.

Trendy flavours aside, Ananda Bhavan also rolls out new dishes on occasions such as National Day. Viren points to its vegetarian version of chicken rice, which was a hit with customers in 2020.

Despite these innovations and new dishes, Viren says the eatery has kept to its old recipes and the menus have remained largely unchanged. Most of his chefs have also been with the business for decades.

While it may be a grand dame nearly a century old, Ananda Bhavan is constantly on its toes.

“I’d like to run the business to a point that it’s able to keep up with the times and ensure that our founders’ philosophies are maintained… and, for the next generation, that (the philosophy) is followed,” Viren says.

For other stories on heritage restaurants in Singapore, check out our interview with Cedric Soh, the third-generation owner of Ka-Soh, known for its comforting fish soup.