When rising restaurant costs are combined with fewer people having money to eat out, serving good food sometimes isn’t enough to keep the lights on.
Last week co-owner Jeanne Chai announced that Singaporean restaurant Kiss My Pans (713 College St.) will close Sept. 7 and its east-end sister restaurant Agak Agak (253 Gerrard St. E.), will close Sept. 6. She said fewer diners and rising operating costs made it impossible to keep the businesses going.
“We’ve been struggling for the past year,” she said. “We were trying our best and it’s like, “Do I need to face the inevitable for another two years? The price of things aren’t going down and I’ll never feel any ease or could thrive. The pressure was just too much to worry about.”
Chai said immigration policies made it difficult for her cooks to get permanent residency and resulted in herlosing three of her five cooks as they either left Canada or pursued careers outside of cooking. She also said the costs and bureaucratic red tape involved in obtaining a liquor licence added to the stress. Her rent increased last month and, she said, ongoing global conflicts have made shipments of some ingredients unpredictable and too expensive.
“I was told my coffee would go from $140 to $340 per case. That’s ridiculous. I’m already charging $5 for a coffee. The changing market realities and the cost of living, they increased so much that the consumer can no longer bear it. If I raised my prices more, it’ll just be another slow decline in our business. And unfortunately, in 2026 Asian food is still expected to be cheap.”
Kiss My Pans earned a spot in the Star’s Top 100 Under $100 guide earlier this year. The char kway teow is smoky wok hei heaven. Black carrot cakes are the punched-up cousin of Chinese daikon cakes: sweet and peppery from being tossed in a molasses-thick soy sauce with a zing of spicy sambal on top. A trio of crispy appetizers comes in an ornately painted tiffin tower: shrimp paste-marinated chicken wings; pork and shrimp rolls wrapped in delicate beancurd skins with the sweet onion crunch of water chestnuts; and deep-fried tofu with shredded cucumber and spicy peanut sauce. It’s how Chai wanted diners to be introduced to Singaporean food.
“We never wanted to dumb down the spice, the umami,” said Chai. “My philosophy is that if you want to try our food, you have to try it the way we eat it or else it’s not what we want to share with Toronto.”
Before Kiss My Pans was a full-fledged Singaporean restaurant, it existed as a catering business in 2018 when Chai and her husband and business partner, David Burga, lived in Singapore. Chai made cheese, fruit and charcuterie platters before the couple moved to Toronto and opened a brick-and-mortar deli at College and Crawford streets in 2021.
The cheese and cured meats were front and centre, but what captivated customers was behind the counter: cups of kopi, Singapore’s iconic coffee drink. Bold Robusta grounds are filtered through a coffee sock before the brew is poured between two kettles to cool it. Sweetened condensed milk is added to mellow the strong, slightly floral coffee.
Dedicated Singaporean restaurants are few and far between, even in a culinary landscape as diverse as Toronto. Encouraged by the positive response to her pandan kueh kosui — a fragrant steamed rice cake topped with coconut — at the Smorgasburg food festival in 2022, Chai began testing more Singaporean dishes at the deli.
First came nasi lemak on Sundays to gauge customers’ interest. Then another dish was added on a trial basis. A brunch menu followed, and eventually they outgrew the deli’s tiny kitchen. The business moved a few doors down, where Kiss My Pans opened as a full-fledged Singaporean restaurant in November 2023. In 2025, Chai and Burga expanded again with Agak Agak in Cabbagetown.
Chai hopes someone with more resources will take over the restaurants to maintain a downtown home for Singaporean food. As for herself, she’s open to the idea of pop-ups in the future. For now, though, she’s focused on the final weeks before the restaurants close.
