young hawkers

I am seeing quite a few young hawkers around. It’s interesting how many of them pour their love into making atas food hawker-friendly and Instagram-worthy.  Fish and chips, pastas, wagyu this-and-that, truffle whatever…

Often, I thoroughly enjoy their offerings because I like things that are different. In the first few months of opening, when passion is at a high, the food is often really worth the price. Although I wonder how many would stay the course and do the same thing, chopping their own ingredients and doing their own cooking to the same standards, for the next 30-40 years the way the old hawkers did.

We check out one such stall recently which isn’t far from us, at a coffeeshop.

The two young men are exactly the ones who I saw featured in the magazine. Apart from telling us we could pay after the meal (not a usual hawker centre or coffeeshop practice), they actually turned away some customers (very politely) to take a lunch break.

I tell the kids, if they can cook one great dish - like carrot cake or some such thing - they're set for life. I wouldn't mind their being future hawkers.

* Wagyu burger ($13) which KK pronounced "good and juicy"

* Day's chicken burger ($6 or $7 I forget)

* And because I hate burgers, my beef rice ($7 or $8 thereabouts), which was really quite beautiful especially after I broke the poached egg and the yolk melted into the gravied rice