Type “don” into a search bar in Singapore and you could end up with two very different lunches. One is a Japanese rice bowl, the subject of everything on this site. The other is a golden chicken pie with a Singapore story of its own. Here is how to tell the two Dons apart, and where to go for each.
Don, as in Donburi
In Japanese food, don is short for donburi (丼). The word means a large, deep bowl, and by extension the meal served in it: hot rice, a topping, and a sauce that seeps down into the grains as you eat. It is everyday food in Japan, the kind of meal you order at a counter and finish in fifteen minutes.
On a menu, “don” almost always comes after the topping. Beef gives you gyudon, a pork cutlet gives you katsudon, chicken and egg give you oyakodon, tempura gives you tendon, eel gives you unadon and a pile of sashimi gives you kaisendon. The names often shorten along the way: “tempura” plus “don” becomes tendon, and “unagi” plus “don” becomes unadon.
On this site we usually write them as two words, such as Gyu Don and Kaisen Don, so the topping and the bowl are easy to spot. If you are new to the dish, start with What is Donburi? and then work through our complete guide to don types.
Don, as in Don Pie
Singapore has a second, completely separate Don. Don Pie is a local chicken pie brand, and here the “Don” is a person: Chef Don Lim, who founded Don Pie and created its chicken pie recipe in 1983. It is the round, hand-held kind of pie that many Singaporeans grew up with, filled with chunky chicken, potato and egg under a golden, flaky crust.
Chef Don Lim also co-founded Chicken Pie Kitchen & Don Signature Crab, a restaurant on Tyrwhitt Road in Jalan Besar, where the pies are baked today under the DonChef name and sold there and at a few takeaway kiosks around the island. Over the years the pie has picked up several names in conversation and in search: Don Pie, Don pies, Don’s pie, Don Pie Club. If you want to know which is which, donpies.com has a clear guide to the Don Pie, Don pies and Don’s pie names that lines them all up.
Why the Two Dons Get Mixed Up
Search engines see letters, not lunch. A short query like “don singapore”, “don near me” or “best don” could reasonably mean either food, and a few habits make the overlap worse:
- The word is tiny. Three letters carry very little context, and plenty of people drop the “buri” or the “pie” when they type in a hurry.
- The capital letter. Menus in Singapore often write the Japanese suffix with a capital, as in “Katsu Don”, which looks exactly like a person’s name.
- The same kind of craving. Both are quick, filling comfort food that you can pick up on a weekday in a mall or near an MRT station, so the searches happen at the same hungry moments.
The result is that some people looking for a chicken pie land on a page about beef bowls, and some people looking for a beef bowl are shown a pie. Neither is the worst outcome for a lunchtime search, but it helps to know which Don you actually meant.
The Two Dons at a Glance
- • Donburi “don”: Japanese, a rice bowl, written 丼, and the word itself means “bowl”
- • Where it sits: after the topping, as in gyudon, tendon or Oyako Don
- • Don Pie “Don”: Singaporean, a baked chicken pie, named after its founder, Chef Don Lim
- • Where it sits: before the food, as in Don Pie or Don’s pie
- • Rule of thumb: if “don” comes after the food, it is a bowl; if “Don” comes before it, it is a person, and probably a pie
Is There Any Connection?
Only the coincidence of the word. Donburi takes its name from a Japanese bowl whose story runs back to the Edo period, which we cover in The History of Don. Don Pie takes its name from its founder, Chef Don Lim, and today’s DonChef pies follow his 1983 recipe. One is a category of dish served by hundreds of restaurants; the other is a single maker’s pie. There is no shared recipe, and no rice bowl is hiding inside the pastry.
So if a friend says “let’s get don”, it is worth a quick follow-up question. A Gyu Don at a beef bowl counter and a chicken pie from a kiosk are both good answers, but they are not the same lunch.
Here for a Rice Bowl? Start Here
If rice is what you were after, you are in the right place. Pick a bowl by topping: beef, seafood, tempura, eel, chicken and egg, pork cutlet or grilled pork. Or browse don shops by neighbourhood, from Orchard and Tanjong Pagar to Tampines and Jurong, and use the shop search to filter by price.
Once you have a bowl in front of you, our guide on how to eat don like a local covers the etiquette, and the secret to perfect don rice explains why the rice underneath matters as much as the topping.
And if it was the pie you wanted all along, the names guide linked above is the best place to pick up the trail.