In January 2017, Mothership’s list of Chinese New Year snacks “too good to feed your guests” put Antoinette’s pork floss meringue at number three, priced at S$10. The site described it as a creation that combines sweet and savoury, and tradition and novelty. It also guessed that the contrast in textures would make the snack hard to stop eating.
A year earlier, in January 2016, another Chinese New Year roundup had described the same snack as light, fluffy meringue entwined with pork floss. It called the result a marriage of French pastry and Chinese tradition. It was also S$10 then, and was sold at Antoinette’s stores or online.
What it was
The snack paired two opposites. Pork floss is the dried, shredded, salty-sweet meat topping familiar from congee and bread. Meringue is the airy, crisp French sugar-and-egg-white confection. Together they gave a sweet-savoury snack that sat comfortably on a New Year tray beside pineapple tarts and bak kwa.
It belonged to a wider Antoinette habit of dressing French pastry in festive Singapore flavours. The 2017 Mothership list also featured the patisserie’s crispy bacon in dark chocolate, a Western riff on bak kwa, priced at S$15 that year.
How it travelled
The flavour outlasted the single box. By February 2018, The Peak listed a pork floss meringue cookie among ten flavours in Antoinette’s Saint Honoré gift box, priced at S$75. The magazine also featured a “Singapura” cookie tin with local flavours such as curry and cheese, spiced salted egg and hae bee hiam.
The patisserie today
Antoinette was a French-style patisserie run by chef-owner Pang Kok Keong. Its original shop on Penhas Road opened in 2011. A Millenia Walk outlet opened in September 2019, but it had been shut since April 2020, when Singapore’s circuit breaker began.
On 23 June 2020, Antoinette announced on its social media pages that it would close, with 30 June as its last day. Pang told The Straits Times that the Urban Redevelopment Authority levy on the shophouse unit had risen to a point the business could no longer sustain. The pandemic made a solution harder to find. The Millenia Walk outlet could not continue because its food was prepared in the Penhas Road kitchen.
Pang said then that he would open a casual noodle stall, Pang’s Hakka Noodles, in a food court. He added that his plans would definitely include a new patisserie. In 2026, HungryGoWhere reported that he had opened Error 404, a dessert and bubble tea cafe in the basement of Capitol Singapore. It serves modern takes on Chinese and Taiwanese sweets.
With the Antoinette shops closed, the S$10 pork floss meringue that readers found in 2016 and 2017 can no longer be bought from them.