Street Food Warms Your Heart: 1942 Alfresco@Changi at 30 Cosford Road - The Executive Chef Francis Tan The Menu The Signature Mains at a glance

The Executive Chef

Francis Tan

Executive Chef Francis Tan brings with him a wealth of experience in the culinary field.

His Culinary Journey

Chef Francis Tan, 51, operated a mixed vegetable stall in Blk 24, Sin Ming Road for seven years, and is famous for the fish head curry he served there. On any given day he could easily served up to more than 20 curry fish head. His mother was the one who inspired him to pursue his dream & passion. When he turn 35, he decided to come out & set up his own business. Due to construction of multi-storey car park next to the Blk 24, business was pretty much affected because of the dust & dirt at the construction site.

Chef Tan moved to the east & set up a steamboat restaurant at the Downtown East he called Kampong House, serving home cooked Zhi Char style dishes for about three years. Due to differences in views with respect to management of the restaurant Chef Tan parted ways with his partners.

Soon after Chef Tan help set up French Cuisine at the Raffles Country Club for the owner Mr Fong and was Head Chef for a year.

He left to join Blue Lobster Seafood Restaurant at 87 Frankel Avenue (owned by David Lee) serving French Cuisine for a year & seven months. The Blue Lobster menu include a wide variety of seafood, during the restaurant's Oyster Promotion month alone they served up to 7 different types of oysters.

Then after Chef Tan was head hunted to join fine dining establishment Brussels Sprout at Robertson Walk as Assistant Head Chef working together with the then Executive French Chef James from France, serving more than 30 dishes of their blue shell mussels in their menu. serves mainly Belgium Cuisine, with blue shell mussels as their Specialty. The restaurant has a team of service staff dressed in opulent costume pretty much like MAD performance based restaurant, including an in house magic show as part of the entertainment, it even has a female staff posed as statute at the Bar counter standing for hours.

He left to join HooHa! Cafe (www.hoohacafe.com) at 27 West Coast Highway for a good six years. HooHa! Cafe is a steakhouse serving one of the best tenderloin steak in Singapore. When Chef Tan joined HooHa! Cafe he revamped the HooHa! Cafe Main Menu to include dishes that are of French Cuisine influence such as the Onion Soup. In fact it was the onion soup he prepared that finally won HooHa! Cafe owner Victor Lee over, claiming that it was the best onion soup he (Victor Lee) has tasted in ten years! Within the first four months of joining HooHa! Cafe Chef Tan started the Set Lunch Menu & sold record sales of the Set Lunch amounting to more than $1000. One of Chef Tan's glorious record over at HooHa! Cafe was a record breaking sales of more than $4,000 during the Christmas holiday season for the Cafe.

He then moved on to work at Silver Kris for a four month stint before headhunted by CEO Gerard Fang to come on board 1942 Alfresco@Changi to helm the kitchen through a mutual friend Leonard who introduced Chef Francis Tan to CEO Gerard Fang. Here at 1942 Alfresco@Changi, Chef Tan has put his wealth of experience to good use by creating the 1942 Full Menu, serving Western Cuisine with American-British influences comprising beautiful art of plating with exquisite flavors, colors, aroma and taste that has many of their customers bowled over.

Chef's Strategy at 1942 Kitchen

Chef Francis Tan handles menu planning at 1942 & changes 1942 Menu every 6 months. With a close knit team of 2 chefs at the 1942 kitchen, the chefs runs on 12 hourly shifts. The restaurant closes every Tuesdays. Chef Tan & his team prepares the marinates, condiments, dressings, sauces, pastes for cooking here at the kitchen at 1942. He gets his meat supplies from Heinrich Food Pte Ltd at 2 Fishery Port Road, & uses air flown chilled beef from New Zealand for his ribeye steaks. Since the supplier delivers daily he tries not to keep too much inventory at any one time to ensure his meats are fresh served, so usually orders his supplies twice a week. Chef Francis Tan's Philosophy in life :"Never ever serve food that are not fresh to the customer! Discard what is not fresh!"

He uses frozen chicken thighs & shares that a good chef is one who has mastered the craft of handling the frozen meat in the marination process such that there lies no taste differentiation between the frozen & fresh meat. He prefers to use frozen pork loin in his pork dishes, and frozen lamb from New Zealand.

Chef Tan uses fresh seafood mainly from Song Lee Lai that supplies good sea bream, cod fish, that are filleted by the supplier. He uses prawns, mussels only for Special Menu such as Christmas. The dishes in the menu are largely served ala minute to ensure the food are warm & fresh in their presentation to the delight of customers.

Chef Tan loves using traditional cooking techniques & methods to bring out the original flavor of the various ingredients in the cuisine he cooks, and is a strong advocate of going back to basics in preparing even a humble simple dish like the onion soup. The one ingredient he cannot do without is fresh mixed herbs, as well as dried herbs (use mainly for marination of meats). He is very creative in the use of sauces in marination and believes in innovation beyond the usage of traditional ingredients, e.g. he uses five spices, oyster sauce & worchester sauce to marinate his Lamb Shank.

The Menu

There are total 12 Categories found in the 1942 Alfresco@Changi Full Menu:

Starters
Soup
Sides
Sandwich
Main Course
Pasta
Asian
Vegetarian Menu
Kid's Menu
Desserts
Drinks
American Pour

The Signature Mains

The Main Course Category in the 1942 Alfresco@Changi menu consists of Signatures :

Braised Lamb Shank
Baked Salmon Ring
Beef Burger

Braised Lamb Shank in Red Wine Sauce

Giant Beef Burger - beef patty served with bacon, sunny side up, with sides straight cut fries & coleslaw.

Baked Salmon Ring - salmon on mashed potatoes & asparagus, topped with purple cabbage & poached egg, garnished with pickled garlic & balsamic sauce & cherry tomatoes.