Kin Hoi – Warm the Cockles of Your Heart at Holland Close

Boy meets girl…and opens a hum store with her? That’s right folks, Holland Close is now home to a stall specialising in shellfish like oysters, gong gong and cockles. Having started out as an e-commerce store, Kin Hoi is the brain-child of co-founders Daniel Teo and Atchara Nimnuan, who share a love for food and wish to provide Singaporeans an ideal avenue for shellfish and dishes coupled with good, authentic Thai flavours.

The two first met in the corporate world of social media, where Daniel was the director and head of International Business at a digital entertainment company in Indo-China and Atchara was one of the top consultants for a notable social media firm (no prizes for guessing which) in Thailand. 

After leaving their high-profile positions, Atchara was the first to step into the F&B business with a stall in the famous Chatuchak market. She was reunited with Daniel at another stall she ran after the pandemic shuttered the market, where it was inspiration at first bite for him and led to the opening of Kin Hoi. 

The star of the show was no doubt the Signature Half Shelled Cockles ($10/19). Kin Hoi uses the Tegillarca Granosa species and has them imported from Malaysia. The hum were some of the fattest and meatiest ones I’ve ever seen, and boy, were they clean! Definitely earned huge plus points for that, thanks to Daniel and Atchara’s superb quality control.  

Cleaning them was no picnic, especially when they were just starting out and manpower was low. They started small with 5kg of cockles that grew to 10kg, eventually leading to four hours of intricately cleaning 20kg worth of hum to make sure each and every one of them was completely free of mud and sand. Not only that, they had to be very careful with the blood pocket lest they break them. It was to the point where calluses had started to form on their fingers. Since then, the flow of orders began steadily streaming in but they soldiered on by hiring more hands and rigorously training them to make sure their cockles are well and truly clean.

The yummy morsels were liberally drizzled in Atchara’s homemade Thai chilli sauce, a secret family recipe that went through lots of trial-and-error with her family as consultants and Daniel as a tasting guinea pig (we heard he consumed almost seven litres in total!) The result was a sweet but piquant mixture that includes fish sauce, garlic and lots of chilli padi that brought out the freshness of the large, meaty cockles. I would hands-down purchase this delicious sauce for other meats too!

It was my first time trying sea conch and the Savoury Gong Gong ($8 for 500g) made it a really good experience. Not only was it super easy to pull the meat out from its shell, it was also very chewy and clean. Daniel mentioned that it was because the gong gong they use are the brownish Indo-Pacific deep-sea ones. The cost is higher but the quality makes it well worth it. 

I was surprised when I was served a different saucer of chilli and learnt that they have two different options customers can choose from. With a colour more vibrantly red than the other, I wasn’t surprised when they said this was a spicier version of the chilli I had. In fact, this was Atchara’s OG version but she created a tamped-down rendition for those who can’t handle their spice. 

Me? I love my spicy food and this version certainly gave me the kick I needed cause, whew! I don’t know whether I bit a chilli seed or not but my tongue needed a few seconds of rest. 

Not a fan of cockles or gong gong? Kin Hoi has Vermicelli Salad ($6/10) and a number of meat dishes on their menu like Thai Honey Grilled Pork ($12) and Smoked Duck ($12). My pick was the Melting Beef ($12). Unlike some places where they claim their beef is tender but is actually tough, Kin Hoi’s beef, which is blow-torched before served, had a good ratio of meat and fat. This dish was actually served at Atchara’s stall in Chatuchak and it certainly brought back fond memories of Bangkok. 

If Holland Close is out of the way for you, their e-commerce stall is still up and running, with exclusive dishes such as Original Tom Yum Collagen Soup for you to enjoy in the comfort of your own home. Just keep an eye out because their cockles are so popular that they get sold out pretty quickly!

MissTamChiak.com made an anonymous visit and paid its own meal at the stall featured here.

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