Say it Ain’t so, Jack

But it is. The original Jack’s Place Steakhouse is moving out

Stiff competition from other eating outlets and a scarcity of parking lots have forced this stalwart to relocate from its Killiney Road premises to UE Square. Still, the restaurant which was started by Mr Say Lip Hai, promises the same ‘60s decor and value-for-money set meals that made it so popular among a generation of Singaporeans.

By Elisabeth Gwee

Those were the days, when a meal here was considered high-class.

First it was the beer, then the good-and-cheap meals attracted and kept customers like Mr. Teo Chin Huat, above, at the original Jack’s Place

  STICKY maroon leather booths that belch and creak whenever you slide into them. Faded brick-print wallpaper that is so crummy and old it curls up at the edges. Air so thick with the scent of garlic that come dinner time, the greasy aroma of lunch still lingers in the air. Dark and dingy, peeling at the seams, these are the charms of Jack’s Place at Killiney Road which has hardly changed a bit in the last 32 years. No slick glass-and-chrome interiors here, or polished silverware and crisp white menus, but regulars love it for the simmering pot of memories that it is.

  Come Monday, however, the charms will be truly just a memory when the restaurant serves its last meal. Competition from other eateries in the area and a scarcity of parking lots have forced the steak house to relocate to new and bigger premises at UE Square next month. The owners promise the same ‘60s decor and value-for-money set meals that made it so popular among a generation of Singaporeans, but it will never be the same.

  Regulars will miss the original for the part it has played in their lives, right from the early days when it started off as a pub owned by an Englishman named Jack Hunt. Then, beer, not beef, was the draw, and did those journalists from nearby Times House on Kim Seng Road come a-chugging. Like Mr Lim Kee Chan, an ex-boxer and deputy sports editor who was a regular fixture at the pub when he was working at the now-defunct New Nation in the ‘70s.

  “The New Nation was an afternoon paper so the minute it went to print at noon, we’d rush over to Jack’s Place,” recalls the 66-year-old retiree. “My editor, an Australian, used to tell me: ‘After a hard day’s work, we must go wet our throats and talk about how we can make our sports pages better.’ Of course, we did more drinking than anything else.”

  The group of 10 or 12 journalists would be there from noon till late in the evening, maybe breaking for an hour or two to make a quick trip back to the office to see if anything needed to be done. But more often than not, they stayed glued to their leather maroon bar stools, shooting the breeze with tales of sports and scandals. The crowd that propped up the bar also included expatriate oil riggers and Singapore businessmen who liked the laid-back feel of the pub.

  “We never got bored because we would have one round of drinks after another,” Mr Lim says. And just so the restaurant managers could keep track of who paid for what, each person who bought a round put his signature in a small notebook. “Of course, by the end of the night, we couldn’t even recognise our names.”

  While the drinkers formed the bulk of customers in the early days, owner and chef Say Lip Hai started drawing in the diners when he bought over the place from Hunt in 1967. He started offering $3.80 set meals comprising sizzling steaks and ox-tail stews, the latter of which has remained the Wednesday set-lunch special all these years. To offer his clients a truly classy dining experience, Mr Say set about transforming the pub into a cosy Italian trattoria-style restaurant, with green-and-white check tablecloths (sewn by his wife, as they are to this day), rustic-looking brick-print wallpaper and romantic candles in the evenings.

  Jack’s Place soon became a popular lunch and dinner spot, especially among young adults and families in the ‘70s and ‘80s. As 32-year-old housewife Lim Lay Geok reminisces: “Jack’s Place was where we all went to be high class in the old days. There you could eat Carpetbagger steak and dine in a nice candlelit setting without burning a big hole in your pocket.”

  And when the restaurant was full, Mr Say would sometimes personally ferry customers over to a branch at Yen San Building in his little Volkswagen rather than turn them away. “It was these little touches that made a big difference,” recalls his daughter Suzanne, 35, who is one of the directors of the company, together with her siblings Albert, Susan, and Anthony.

  When Mr Say retired in the mid-’80s, his children decided to run not just a family business, but a management-oriented company. And so, Jack’s Place Holdings was set up and the business expanded to include more outlets in the HDB heartland as well as a catering business and four cake houses.

  Killiney Road regulars, however, cannot help but feel a sense of loss. Says piano teacher Teo Chin Huat, 64: “I’ve been coming to this branch for the last 30 years, and even though I’ve visited the other newer outlets, they just do not have the same feel as this one.” Mr Johnny Lim, a regular for the last 31 years, insists that none of the 10 other branches serves up as good a steak as the Killiney outlet. “I don’t know why, it just tastes the best here. Maybe I’m biased, but I guess it has got to do with the character of the place. This is where it all started after all.”

  Even though they will be moving to swankier premises, the Say siblings insist they will stay true to their father’s philosophy of quality food and service. Suzanne says the look of the new restaurant will be modelled closely after the first, right down to the same brick-print wallpaper.

  As she explains: “We want to maintain as much of the original look as possible for sentimental reasons, and that includes the brick-print wallpaper, no matter how fake it looks.”

  And that, to regulars like Mr John Tan, is very good news. “Jack’s Place is one of the few places where you feel as though time has stood still, and that’s fine with me because who doesn’t want to be reminded of the good old days?”

Actual article published.