Elijah Pies Opens Joo Chiat Flagship with Elevated Menu and Pet-Friendly Design

Elijah Pies, the pie brand that built its reputation on Instagram-ready desserts, is opening a second dine-in location this Saturday in a heritage shophouse on Joo Chiat Place. The 60-seat flagship represents a deliberate step forward for founders Elijah Tan and Limin Wong, both 36, who have spent twelve years turning what began as a homemade Nutella pie into a recognizable Singapore brand with a baking studio, workshops, and a three-year-old Tanjong Pagar cafe.

The new space occupies a restored shophouse that took nearly two years to find. When Wong and Tan first walked through the door, she recalls it felt like "love at first sight." The interior, designed by architectural firm Nice Projects, carries that care forward through deliberate details: tabletops inlaid with blue Brazilian crystal, flooring laid with 1,480 hand-cut Italian travertine tiles placed individually by hand. The couple observed that many of their customers lived in the eastern part of the island, making Joo Chiat a logical place to anchor a flagship operation. The space itself has been configured to serve larger groups—there is a ten-seat dining table with a lazy Susan, free babyccinos and housemade cheese crisps for children.

The new location also reflects a shift in the founders' lives. A year ago, they acquired their first dog, a Shih Tzu-poodle cross named Snoopy. Noticing dog owners regularly walking through the Joo Chiat neighbourhood, they designed a pet service corner outside where visitors can water their dogs and receive a complimentary dog cookie. It is a small detail that signals how the brand has matured—no longer purely transactional, but attentive to the texture of neighborhood life.

The menu showcases what Wong calls "more elevated techniques." The flagship dine-in special is Elijah's Souffle Pie, priced at eighteen Singapore dollars, baked fresh to order and served warm. It layers gianduja souffle with almond joconde and hazelnut praline, topped with a chocolate flower that melts gradually into the dessert. A new Kaya Toffee Pie, inspired by the Peranakan shophouses surrounding the cafe, combines housemade kaya with gula Melaka toffee and grated coconut for nine dollars. Then there are the Pizza Pies—a series built on a croissant crust with hand-laminated dough folded three times into twenty-seven alternating layers of French butter and flour. Tan spent four to five months in research and development to capture the essence of Chicago deep-dish pizza while keeping the offering visually aligned with the brand's aesthetic. A new mocktail called "1930," priced at thirteen dollars, pays homage to the building itself: coconut water infused with pandan leaves, layered with butterfly pea extract, and topped with a foam combining coconut cream and hazelnut milk.

What has sustained Elijah Pies through twelve years is not accident. Wong left a ten-year career in brand marketing to run the business full time, and she has applied that discipline systematically. The brand invests heavily in social media marketing, particularly photography. All images on their Instagram account come from a single photographer they have worked with for years. Over time, they have learned which angles and compositions drive engagement. "We make the photos and the pies that we serve look yummy online, and people are intrigued enough to visit our store," Wong explained. Equally critical is ensuring that the experience customers have online matches what they encounter in person.

Tan brings a complementary skill set. His background in business has shaped how they operate. "We know how to run it less like an F&B operation and more like a business," he said. That distinction has mattered. They plan for ingredient costs to rise. They absorb the same pressures every restaurant faces—climbing wages, volatile commodity prices—but they do so from a position of deliberate caution. The company did not begin with a full retail cafe. Instead, they started small, operating a delivery-only model from a central kitchen. That structure proved crucial during COVID-19 lockdowns, when many restaurants struggled. Only after restrictions lifted and customers could dine out again did they open their first retail location at Tanjong Pagar, eight years into the business. Wong emphasized that this patience reflected accountability to their team. "They rely on us to make good decisions for their livelihood," she said. "We certainly could not do all of this on our own."

Running a business as a married couple introduces its own friction. Tan acknowledged the small daily disagreements that arise. His advice is straightforward: establish clear divisions of responsibility, do what you do well, and trust your partner to execute their domain without interference. "You learn, lah!" he said. For now, the couple is settling into the Joo Chiat neighbourhood, which has greeted them with warm welcomes and genuine curiosity about what they are building.