Singapore's Hawker Food

https://www.insightguides.com/destinations/asia-pacific/singapore/cultural-features/singapores-hawker-food

A visit to this city-state is incomplete without a meal at one of its food centres,
where an astonishing variety of dishes are cooked on the spot.
In the old days, there was no such thing as a hawker centre. Instead, the roving
hawker was a familiar fixture in the neighbourhood. The sound of an ice-cream
bell, or the clacking of a bamboo stick against a wooden block, or the chant of
the mua chee man selling sticky nougat-like candy, would send children and their
parents scrambling from their homes into the streets to buy their favourite snack.
The fare on offer was amazing, from bread and bowls of steaming noodle soups to
peanuts and poh piah (spring rolls).
Then came the roadside hawkers, who set up their makeshift stalls on the streets
after dark, when parking lots were emptied of cars and replaced by wooden tables
and stools, and pushcarts which doubled as mobile kitchens. By 1987, with
urbanisation and an obsession with cleanliness, the last of the roadside hawkers
were cleared. The only places where you can find roadside hawkers today are
Chinatowns Smith Street and Gluttons Bay at The Esplanade. These sanitised
recreations of yesteryear do their best to resemble the citys once bustling and
colourful street life.
The hawker centre offers multi-ethnic Singapore cooking at its best. Whether its a
simple dish of noodles for S$3 or a S$20 three-course meal of barbecued fish,
chilli prawns and fried vegetables with rice, the cost is a fraction of what you
would pay for a similar meal in a restaurant. Prices apart, the experience is unique,
and a pleasant reminder of your stay in this food-crazy city.
For the uninitiated, heres how you order a meal at a hawker centre. If theres a
group of you, have one person sit at a table to chope (meaning reserve in local
parlance) seats for the rest of the party. Dont be surprised if you see seats with
bags or packets of tissue paper on them; its a sign that they have been taken. The
others, having noted the table number, should order their food and tell the stall
owner the table number they are seated at, unless of course its a self-service
operation. If youre on your own, you can share a table with strangers. As you
savour your meal, you will realise why true-blue local gourmets will head for their
favourite food stall at every opportunity. Some of the best places to try the hawker
centre experience for yourself include Chinatown Food Street, East Coast
Lagoon Food Village and the Tekka Centre.
When celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain visited Singapore, he proclaimed, I love
the hawker centres. The whole style of casual eating here is sensational. Truly, his
words sum up the feelings of both Singaporeans and visitors alike of our amazing
hawker centres.
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Wok Does the Future Hold for Hawker Food?

By Goh Wei Leong, Law Yong Xiang Clement and Wee Ghim Khoon Clement
Mr. Wong owns a nondescript stall at the corner of Amoy Street Food Market.
Every day, he lifts the shutters to his stall at 5 in the morning, the effort of the past
20 years clearly taking a toll on him. Mr. Wong will spend the next two hours
busying himself with preparations for the long day ahead, cutting, cleaning, and
preparing ingredients for the 14-odd hours that his stall is open for business.
The place is small, very hot, he smiles, fanning himself, before uttering in a
familiar lilt of Singlish, but okay lah, can!
When asked about where he seems himself in the future, Mr Wongs cheerful
demeanour drops, his brows knotting themselves with worry.
See how lor.
HAWKING A DYING TRADE
Mr. Wong is not alone. All over Singapore, we encounter various Mr. Wongs, and
their problems are intimately familiar to the other. Escalating costs are often cited
as a reason; coupled with old age, many hawkers are opting to give up their
businesses than to continue with their routine. Nobody to take over the recipe,
Mr. Wong sighs.
When interviewed in 2014 by then-undergraduate Cheong Ying Hui, 70 year old
fishball noodle stall owner Ong Boon Chiang lamented, Im getting on in age
you cant expect me to sell one hundred more bowls of fishball noodles just to pay
more rent right? I would rather retire.
Im getting on in age you cant expect me to sell one hundred more bowls of
fishball noodles just to pay more rent right? I would rather retire. Ong Boon
Chiang, 70 year old fishball noodle stall owner
Indeed, ask the average Singaporean and one will be hard-pressed to find an
aspiring hawker. The modern Singaporean dream, so it is said, is one of
comfortable, well-paying 9-to-5 jobs, of gleaming skyscrapers and executive
meetings; with scarcely a nod to the grime and grit of hawker life. Surveying what
he calls the cancer facing Singapores hawker heritage, household name and
Singaporean food expert KF Seetoh bemoaned the lack of successors to heirloom
recipes, and the resultant loss in Singapores cultural heritage.
Why should we care? After all, most can do without a tasty orh luak or two.
But such would perhaps be a myopic reading of the very immediate and practical
strain faced by hawkers. As Singapores Department of Statistics reported, there
were 268 Singaporean residents per licensed hawker in 2014; this ratio has seen an
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overall increase over the last half a decade. Indeed, the numbers suggest that Mr.
Wongs troubles are shared structural challenges faced by hawkers en masse, and
not merely the voices of a few loud, disgruntled hawkers who have risen above the
cacophony.
Clearly, people do care as evidenced in grassroots moves to record Singapores
food history and even turn it into a classroom syllabus, alongside calls from
concerned individuals for Singapores hawker food to be placed on the UNESCO
Intangible Cultural Heritage List. The government has also joined in to extol the
virtues, as it were, of hawker food, with Minister Vivian Balakrishnan
commending hawker centres as a unique feature of life in Singapore where
everyone can eat and socialise in an informal unpretentious place with affordable
& delicious local food.
I believe that hawker centres are a unique feature of life in Singapore where
everyone can eat and socialise in an informal unpretentious place with affordable
& delicious local food. Minister Vivian Balakrishnan

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