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From Tampines to Tuas, we’ll investigate the untold stories of the different neighbourhoods in Singapore — firsthand.

Andrew Chen, 42, serves his ice cream with the finesse of a restaurateur: fridge-chilled saucers, spoons dipped in hot water so they cut through the ice cream like butter.

In front of me, he sets a glass of a champagne (to cleanse the palate between bites) and — the highlight — a perfect, creamy quenelle of ice cream.

It's all very disconcerting. Especially coming from a guy in a neon yellow T-shirt with a hole in the middle and flip-flops, who, during our interview, hoists his bare foot onto the kitchen counter to show me his calluses. Yes, really.

Chen sells homemade ice cream. At between S$34 and S$70 a tub, his ice cream is perhaps one of the most expensive in Singapore — and yet sought after enough that the waiting time for a tub approximates a year. "Atas ice cream", as a previous news report describes.

But he's known for more than just his ice cream.

In contrast to the smiling staff you'd see in commercial shops like Sunday Folks or Plain Vanilla, Chen has gotten a reputation for his eccentric "no customer service" approach to dealing with his buyers: abrasive, blunt, even — in some cases — downright rude.

He's not shy about it, either. Chen regularly posts about his interactions with customers on his Instagram Stories, garnering him equal parts admirers and naysayers.

He's also been outspoken about his dislike of working with other people, hence the one-man-show he currently operates.

But why would someone who seemingly dislikes dealing with people so much want to enter F&B — one of the most notoriously customer-facing jobs out there?

In hopes of getting a clearer answer, I ask him, upon entering his home, how he would describe himself job-wise. An entrepreneur? An artisan?

"I don't consider myself as anybody special," is his reply, predictably matter-of-fact. "I'm just some guy who sells ice cream from home lor."

Singapore's most expensive ice cream

On his Instagram page, a post declares, somewhat brusquely: "The ice cream scene is at best mediocre."

Chen describes his work as "an extension of [his] personality", and it's hard to argue with. Plain-spoken, no-nonsense, and yet undeniably epicurean, he's a lot like his ice cream, in a sense — which, price tag aside, is sold with neither fancy flavours nor attractive promotions.

Just ice cream made with quality ingredients, churned batch by batch in his Dawson Road home.

A self-described "fussy eater", Chen first began Onebyone Ice Cream in 2021, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. "I started seeing home-based businesses flourishing," he tells me.

"And I thought to myself, okay, since I'm so fussy about food, maybe some people will like what I make."

He'd previously been making ice cream casually, for friends and such. An avid traveller and eater, he'd hoped to bring the decadent dessert he'd come across in restaurants around the world into Singaporean households, outside of the typical mass-produced Magnolia/Movenpick variety.

At first, his business gained little traction. With neither a physical space nor online marketing — the latter which he overtly disdains — it took a while for him to gain an audience.

"There were many, many months I was just sitting around twiddling my thumbs," he admits.

Word only began to spread when Aun Koh, the editor-in-chief of Tatler Singapore, posted on Instagram raving about the "fabulous" ice cream that his wife had ordered.

The food editor of lifestyle magazine 8 Days eventually picked up the trail, leading to the article that gave Chen his first taste of media publicity — and a massive influx of orders.

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Cut to today, and the number of orders he receives far outstrips the amount his one-person outfit can make.

It's gotten to a point where he has stopped accepting orders (he has orders full till 2025), only selling excess batches that are available on a fastest-fingers-first (FFF) basis.

Given the long wait times otherwise, these unsurprisingly sell out in a matter of seconds.

The demand is understandable. Prices and obnoxiously long waiting times aside, it's ice cream that's on a different level from your average McFlurry or Magnum. (You can take my word for it, but if not, he uploads his customers' reviews — overwhelmingly positive — on his Instagram Highlights. Ironically, it's titled "Critique".)

And while he does make ice cream in flavours like vanilla and hazelnut, the menu also includes more novel flavours like wasanbon, black sesame, and hay. Yeah, like the stuff that horses eat, at S$70 a tub.

These might sound kind of outlandish to the typical Singaporean suaku (as Chen puts it), but he clarifies that they're actually very much available. Just not so much in Singapore, with its dearth of fresh ingredients.

As such, Chen doesn't consider his ice cream anything exceptional, and least of all atas.

"A lot of people say my ice cream is good. Honestly speaking, I just think it's palatable. It's going to sound very arrogant, but the reason why people think it's atas is because they just don't know what is out there. You have not travelled as much, maybe, or you have not eaten as much.

"My ice cream is just palatable. Okay lah. Boleh boleh, as they say in Malay."

No customer service here

Having orders come in faster than he can fulfil sounds kind of like a business's dream come true.

Yet Chen's response — rather than scale, or increase his prices in line with the economics — was to become increasingly picky about his customers.

"There is definitely a proportion of my customers who just want this thing for the purposes of their Instagram, for the purposes of telling their friends they've had it," he tells me. "Definitely have."

"At the moment, I'm talking to so many people, I don't have that much attention.

But the moment I start to figure it out...that you are that sort of person...then I will pretend not to see your order. Don't go and buy the ice cream because it's hard to get."

His no-customer-service approach, coupled with his no-bullsh*t personality, has inevitably led him to occasionally butt heads with his customers.

"I'm not the Four Seasons concierge," he tells me bluntly.

"My priorities lie elsewhere...And it's a case of 'we don't need to be friends.' You know, the older you get, the less you give a sh*t about things.  You have less patience for rubbish."

On one occasion, a customer texted him to ask that the "the delivery person" avoid ringing the doorbell, and to text her when he was arriving instead. "I am the delivery person," he'd responded.

In another case, a customer had repeatedly asked if he'd have any ice cream available that night. He'd finally answered: "7-11". (Not the order time — he'd meant, get it from a convenience store if you want ice cream so badly.)

Sometimes, he even actively discourages his eager followers from buying. With his regular FFF sales, for which only several locations are eligible for delivery, he's had customers beg to go down and meet him where he is for the ice cream.

"Not gonna happen," he told one follower. "All ice cream is delivered to an address with a freezer. No meet ups."

And when he finally opened for orders in early July — a two-day event, with delivery between July and September 2025 — he ended up imploring buyers to "calm down".

"The ice cream is not free leh. You all click like machiam (sic) free."

Taking pride in his work

Some of his slighted customers have even accused him of "not knowing how to run a business", and to be honest, it's hard to disagree.

As Chen admits readily, since he posts all these interactions on Instagram, every incident brings him complaints and unfollows.

In addition, he's had people provide feedback on his work: the styrofoam boxes he uses, the food wastage he accumulates. The way his ice cream might melt too quickly for their liking, or perhaps be a tad too bitter. All of which Chen ignores.

As to the idea of making ice cream for people with specific dietary needs, like vegans or diabetics: "You diabetic you go drink water," is his blunt response.

So, why? I ask. I mean, this is still a business, right?

This is where Chen — despite his distaste for the word "artisan" — ends up kind of fitting the bill.

He explains: "It's just like those people who want to buy a nice bed, but they actually don't know how it's constructed."

"They don't know. They don't know the origins of the company."

It's the first hint to me of why Chen does what he does. For one, he does take pride in his work. He notably refuses to describe his own ice cream beyond the obvious facts — ingredients and so on — because "a person who's making whatever, has no place talking about its attributes".

Neither does he have any illusions as to the importance of his work. "It's ice cream," he says bluntly. "It's not essential. Don't eat won't die one what."

But at the end of the day, some things don't have to be said. Every artist wants his work appreciated for its intrinsic value, not its market price. Chen is no different.

Even if he's just "some guy who sells ice cream".

Not just a business

It takes me some time, but eventually I recognise the crux of what I find so interesting about Onebyone and Chen.

It's exactly what he pointed out at the beginning of the interview. That his work is an extension of himself.

That's something that's hard to find in today's Singapore, where many businesses end up becoming soulless, sterile organisms. At risk of gross oversimplification, they're all essentially the same: unthinking machines, providing some product or service imported from some unreachable continent, run by some unknowable CEO.

But Onebyone is different. It's not just a business run by Chen; it is Chen. His personality, abrasive as it is, overflows into every aspect of the business. There is no separation.

It's not all the bad stuff, either.

While he does come off as kind of blunt and abrasive (I write this with full confidence that he won't be offended), there is something in him that aligns more optimistic.

For instance, in plenty of interactions, he comes across as helpful — even congenial. Regular customers ask him for food recommendations, restaurant reviews, and he's generally happy to comply.

And when speaking with me, he's full of unaffected advice, showing me how to best pair my ice cream — wasanbon with matcha, hazelnut with salt.

I realise Chen is not entirely unique in this. We see it, to a lesser extent, in home-based businesses, hawkers, and so on. It's what makes them so compelling, that human-ness.

Chen is just more overt than most about his own humanity.

Good ass ice cream

But back to the question at hand. Why do what he does in the first place?

He clearly isn't it for the money — alone, anyway.

And, obviously, neither is he a people person. In fact, he's the opposite, as a self-professed cynic and pessimist. "I'm generally a very critical person, I like to point out the negatives. That's why people don't like hanging out with me," he tells me, at one point in the interview.

It's ironic, because even as he lashes out and loses patience with his customers, he also says several times — albeit with plenty of exasperation — that he wants Singaporeans to explore new foods, new places.

He wants people to try this apparently-so-novel product.

For what? I ask. I mean, if he's really the "angry ice cream man" that his naysayers believe him to be, and if he's really as cynical as he comes off as, he has no reason to want Singaporeans to do better, or to care.

It's the first time I see him at a loss, and he pitches several answers, none of them quite striking true — because these things won't last forever, because it's stuff that tastes nice, because he wants them to be more exposed to the finer things in life.

To me, that rings of a "good things must share" ideology. Which — in my opinion — is less about the "things" in question, and more about the compulsion to share.

There's a generosity there, an undeniable sense of brotherhood. Reluctant as that might be.

And perhaps that's one of the reasons why his customers keep coming back. Novelty is a draw, but that wears off. Luck only brings you so far. And, sure it is also damn good ice cream (tried and tested, no lie).

But what differentiates him from the Michelin-star restaurants is Chen himself. In all his straightforward, human realness.

And, I mean, his belief that "ice cream can be better".

What's that if not pure optimism?

Have something even more interesting going on in your neighbourhood? One-up us at [email protected].

Firsthand is a new content pillar by Mothership, featuring in-depth stories about people and their issues.