Food and hospitality have always been about more than what’s on the table. They’re about people, stories, and the spark that keeps them going even when the industry tests their limits. Passion is what binds these journeys together, though it manifests in different ways: As resilience, purpose, creativity, or curiosity.
En Chew, Founder, Mondo
For En Chew, food has always been more than flavour. “It’s like a time capsule,” she says. “A single taste can resurrect a memory or transport me somewhere familiar – or entirely new.” That fascination with the way flavours hold both intimacy and connection became the foundation for her first venture: Mondo, a gelato-coffee bar that opened on Amoy Street in mid-2025.
At just 30, Chew is still at the beginning of her journey in F&B. Unlike other professionals, what drew her in wasn’t a childhood kitchen epiphany or a storied culinary career, but the quiet conviction that food can create memory and meaning for others. At Mondo, that idea takes tangible form in inventive, small-batch gelato flavours: Blue cheese with candied pear, lemon sake sorbet, pistachio from Sicily, paired with cocktails, coffee, and even playful alcoholic floats. Each creation reflects her belief in curiosity and experimentation as tools for wonder.
Being new to the industry, the steepest challenge has not been a single setback, but realising the sheer breadth of obstacles, such as rising rents, manpower shortages, or shifting consumer expectations. Yet Chew approaches these hurdles with humility: “Every industry contends with difficulties shaped by broader economic realities. For us, the challenge is joining that wider conversation, understanding how those forces affect us, and finding our footing within it.”
(Related: Pizza, people, and the price of passion)
What sustains her, however, are the small, human moments. Watching someone’s face light up at a spoonful of gelato, or hearing that a flavour sparked a forgotten memory, reaffirms her purpose. “Gelato is ephemeral – it melts, it disappears – but the memory lingers. Knowing that something we create might stay with someone, even briefly, feels like a quiet privilege.”
Chew doesn’t claim to have all the answers to sustaining passion in the long run. For now, she returns to curiosity: Experimenting, tasting, learning. “Passion survives when we protect space for wonder,” she reflects. Already, the journey has taught her that passion and resilience grow together – each giving the other strength.
At Mondo, that philosophy comes alive in every scoop: Fleeting yet memorable, whimsical yet intentional, inviting guests to slow down, savour, and carry a piece of that memory with them.
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