SINGAPORE – At Ten Ten Otoko, a Japanese food stall tucked inside a coffee shop in Lavender, stall owner David Wong deftly slices slabs of sashimi-grade salmon. He pats them on ice, garnishing them with lemon slices to counter the heat of the setting with no air-conditioning.

The price? Ten dollars for five hefty slices.

The 39-year-old, who opened the stall in August 2024, started out serving raw fish and sushi at a coffee-shop stall at Punggol’s Edgefield Plains, which he ran from January 2022 until he moved out in December 2023, to a larger space.

His motivation is to deliver well-priced Japanese fare, served with the flair and discipline of a restaurant kitchen, that regulars are able to afford more than once a week.

More hawkers are now following a similar playbook, raising the bar for Japanese cuisine in neighbourhood coffee shops and hawker centres.

Over the past year, a wave of cooks and chefs who used to work in Japanese restaurants have opened such stalls – from Haru-Haru, serving mentai tonkatsu in Bras Basah, to Jinggho Shokudo, which operates out of Yishun Park Hawker Centre and Beauty World Centre.

They took the leap to run their own business with a low barrier to entry, setting up stalls with modest start-up costs – from about $20,000.

“Every chef dreams of having his own business,” says Mr Wong, who began as an apprentice at a Japanese restaurant when he was 19. He became sous chef at a Japanese fine-dining restaurant before quitting to start his own stall at 30.

“You can customise your menu, present your food the way you want and eventually earn money,” he says.