Each time I come, there is one fewer. Long gone is my beloved Lavender hawker - a ramshackle open-air food court not far from our condo. I would come once every few weeks to nurse a beer or down a savory pancake or two. It was across the street from an assortment of karaoke bars and cheap hotels - the people watching was second to none. The shiny condo tower that replaced it casts a long shadow and no doubt will sanitize the whole neighborhood.
Some see progress. Progress towards blandness if you ask me. The hawker IS Singapore - it is one of the unique features that defines the place.
I spent a part of every day in at least one. At Sin Ming, I ate south Indian pratas with curry with my favorite Singapore gals. The little one sweats like her daddy, hair plastered to her face.
Meiwan was with us the second time we hit Sin Ming for pratas.
It's tough work running a stall in a hawker. Long hours on your feet turning out the same dish time after time, sweating like crazy for little money. The older generation has nobody to pass their recipes down to. The kids, like this one, now work in the big downtown sky scrapers making 30 times more than their parents. There is nobody to pick up the mantle. Some dishes have already disappeared, many more are on the endangered list. It's a culture that is slowly fading away.
In twenty years, I fear they will all be gone. Replaced by sit down restaurants with air conditioning, offering bland remakes at quintuple the price. It's sad to imagine.
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