Lim Bee Hoon (1933–2018), Ah Ma, married Tan Chee Keong in 1953 and ran everything above the coffee shop that he did not run below it. She was Peranakan, cooked like it, and considered most other cooking a misunderstanding.
Early life
The youngest of seven, in a house in Katong where the girls learned beadwork before they learned to read. Her slippers, beaded by her own hand at fourteen, are in a box under Mei Lin's bed.
Family
Three children, eight grandchildren. Her ang ku kueh marked every one of their first months.
Stories about them
“She could not bear waste. She once unpicked a whole kebaya to reuse the buttons, and then sewed the kebaya back together around new ones.” — her daughter Mei Lin