Over the pandemic lockdown, Keith Wong grilled up a dripping orgy of steaks in his backyard, emitting a lingering bovine smoke cloud that irked his 14-member household.
“My mother kicked me out of the house; she said, son, enough is enough. Every day we smell steak till we don’t feel like eating it anymore. Please go and find another place to cook,” he admits sheepishly. It didn’t help that his then-pregnant sister-in-law was nauseated by the languid aroma of charred meat.
This bumped his home-based business into a snug six-seater brick-and-mortar space at Arcadia Road, before moving to occupy its current premises at The Grandstand. Incidentally, the latter was secured through an introduction by family friend and TungLok founder Andrew Tjioe.
Keef The Beef is the embodiment of the 38-year-old’s enduring obsession with life’s finer cuts. “When I was young, I had a few good slices of roast beef from live carving stations at hotel buffets and could not forget their beefy umami flavours and unctuousness. I thought about it regularly and kept persuading my parents to take us for more of such meals,” recounts Wong.
As a teenager, he pursued his hankering for steak par excellence with houndlike persistence, accompanying his mother to the butcher and perusing cookbooks to refine his technique over a barbecue pit gifted by his family. “I kept modifying the barbecue pit, going as far as to change the combustion outlets and buy my own valve, because I couldn’t get the right temperature,” he informs me, before launching into an exposition on how to achieve an even Maillard reaction to caramelise meat.
Having the means to tinker with pricey cooking equipment is surely a marker of privilege, but the towering business-owner — whose head grazes door frames at 1.9m-tall — wasn’t exactly cosseted into his current calling.
The son of corporate gift supplier Noel Gifts’ founder Alfred Wong, Wong recalls helping to sweep the warehouse and pack hampers in exchange for stipends during school holidays, when his father withheld his pocket money. At 15, he was thrown into the fire when tasked with soliciting hamper sales.
“My dad would drop me off every morning at Kaki Bukit industrial estate with a stack of catalogues and order forms. I stood there thinking, ‘Are you kidding me? What does he want from me?’”
It proved to be a lesson in grit. Through a crucible of rejections and rebukes from crusty workers at grease-slicked automobile and welding workshops, the rookie forged his sales strategy. “I waited outside to observe the staff’s temperament and made friends with those I knew I needed to talk to the boss, whether it was the foreman or mechanic. It wasn’t easy, I was chased by crazy guard dogs,” he recounts.
The plucky adolescent brazened it out and in halting Mandarin, wheedled with ‘aunties’ to help store his catalogues at their workshops while he made his rounds. Eventually, as Chinese New Year approached, orders would start streaming in. “Looking back, I understand my dad was trying to develop my confidence and people skills, and also thicken my skin to handle rejection.”
Having served the family business for the good part of a decade, Wong stepped out in 2019 to perform ministry work at his church — a means of divining his vocation. “I didn’t really find a sense of fulfilment (from sales). I was good at what I was doing but felt there was more to life than this monotony.”
That did not inspire a career in pastoral care, but the crack pitmaster could, by then, hazard a guess at his talents. The 72-hour slow-roasted wagyu ribs he’d laboured over for loved ones sparked a business catering to cabin-fevered diners languishing under lockdown.
“I found myself in quite a nice position because I was the first cooked steak delivery business in Singapore. Morton’s, Cut and Bistecca all initially refused to do delivery because they were too proud about it — if you want to enjoy my steak you have to come to my place,” he recalls.
When the business outgrew Wong’s multi-generational home, which he also shares with his brother’s family, the father-of-three and his wife Jeanne Wong threw caution to the wind and opened their first full-fledged steakhouse. It majors in decadent Peter Luger-style premium cuts broiled in melted butter, which can be paired with sake procured by Wong. Sides such as homemade kimchi and bluefin tuna collar lend an Asian twist to a main event that’s synonymous with a hulking New York institution.
Soon, the duo will expand the business into a conservation building at Rochester Commons.
Wong credits his wife, a former marketing professional at Estee Lauder, for being a supportive and complementary presence in the venture. Though he’s left behind his days of peddling hampers for Noel Gifts, where two of his siblings are installed, lessons gleaned from his entrepreneur father have stuck.
“My father is a righteous person and always tells me, son, keep your accounts short. It was only when I was older that I understood what he meant: fess up quickly, make things right and move on so you don’t have a lot of baggage. Even if I’m unhappy with the outcome of an interaction I still value the person for who he/she is and can overlook our differences.”
Photography: Mun Kong
Styling: Chia Wei Choong
Hair: Peter Lee, using Goldwell
Makeup: Keith Bryant Lee, using Dior Beauty
