If you were to walk through the hawker centres of Singapore, ah, these days, they are known as food court for those with airconditioning and food centre for the improved hawker centres, you might be able to see many similar food selections being served, with new ones being added. There are the typical fishball noodles, bakchor noodles, wanton noodles, braised duck rice and noodles, chicken - white and roasted - rice, nasi bryani (no, not the dam type), char kuay teow (fried kuay teow that many Singaporean Chinese would swear by it .. die die must try), char chai tau kuey (fried radish cake, more commonly known as carrot cake, I don’t know why), fried sotong mee (also known as fried Hokkien noodles - where the other other darker sauce version could hardly be found in the food centres) and more. We could run a list and get comments.

With many Mainland Chinese in Singapore, the food range has widened to cover northern Chinese food such as jiaozi, cha-jiang-mian, la-mian (of many varieties) and tim-sum (dim sum) is also making its appearance in the food centres. There’s also the Cantonese style steamed rice with various ingredients on top of the rice.

And now, the modern mix of western foods are coming in. Italian dishes are overtaking the cheap western version of pork chops and the lot. German food has made its appearance in Chinatown Food Centre.

It appears that in many food centres, apart from a few, the food stalls are there just to serve those who are hungry and who needs to fill in their tummies. No one is going to travel all the way for it. Why? It often crossed my mind as I tried a dish that I never really relish but well, eat for the sake of eating.  Couldn’t the stallholder put in more efforts in the cooking? Or is that the best that they could do?  While it is true that “one man’s meat is another’s poison”, if there are no repeats, I am sure the food is not tasty. And for how long could it depend on snaring the unsuspecting ones? (^^)

As good customers, should we not try to help the stallholders improve on the dishes? Or do we vote with our feet? (^^)

My two har-gao (shrimp dumpling) worth