I’ve always said that pessimistic predictions of the death of hawker culture are greatly exaggerated. Many young hawkers have taken up the mantle. True, many of them have incorporated international elements in their food, they don’t cook the “traditional” hawker food like hokkien mee. But our “traditional” hawker food has all along borrowed elements from elsewhere and made it our own;  you can’t find Hainanese chicken rice on Hainan island. Given long enough time, food from these young hawkers will become traditional hawker food too.

8 new hawker stalls:

It’s a kiosk opened by young people selling Thai Boat noodles at $4.80. You have a choice of pork or beef, soup or dry. The sides include fish wontons ($3.50) and fish satay ($3.50).

This Geylang kopitiam stall serves kushiyaki, Japanese grilled skewers, starting from $1.30 a stick. Try the bacon cherry tomatoes ($1.60) and cheesy grilled oysters ($10.50, 3 pcs).

After their immense success of salted egg yolk fish and chips at Ang Mo Kio and Cineleisure, Fish & Chicks opens a third outlet near Commonwealth MRT and has 3 new Thai-inspired flavors: tom yum pasta, green curry and Thai chilli sauces.

Their seafood soup goes for $6 but their signatures are crayfish seafood soup ($10) which has clams, prawns, sliced fish, lobster ball and crayfish; and lobster seafood soup ($28) which has prawns, clams, lobster ball, and lobster. They fry their ingredients first before making them into soup, thereby bringing out the fragrance. With the soup, there is a choice of rice or handmade noodles.

When the two young hawkerpreneurs were in Penang, they asked a hawker if he could teach them the recipe. The Penang hawker actually agreed! They learnt for two weeks and came back to Singapore to open this stall selling Penang-stylee prawn noodles soup for $4.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BSQtUKeBjOX/

When Song Kee, famed for their handmade fishballs and yellowtail har keow (fish dumplings), closed last July, legions of fans mourned. In their closed shop space at Upper Serangoon, a “Finest Song Kee” sprang. It is supposed to be opened by their relative, but fans lament it doesn’t taste the same. Now the original Song Kee is back with the same hawker Chua Soo Chai at Tembeling Road.

The owners of Face to Face noodles, which is one of my best meals under $20 in 2016, have come up with “diet-sized” versions of their popular noodles (ban mee, chilli ban mee, kolo mee, etc) at $3.90. You shake it to mix the sauce properly before you eat.

Joshua Koo and Dylan Ong made waves a few years ago when they moved from a kopitiam stall to to open Saveur restaurant and quickly expanded into the Saveur Group. Both of them have left the Group and are currently flying solo. Koo went back to his roots and opened Taste Affair, a hawker stall in Amoy Food Centre, selling pasta and rice for $5 to $7. On 15 Apr, Ong will be opening The Masses, a restaurant that serves affordable fine-dining food.

You may be interested in…
–15 New Cafes and Takeaway Shops in Apr 2017
–12 New Hawkers in Mar 2017
–7 New Hawkers in Feb 2017
–4 New Hawkers in Jan 2017

Photo Credit: Photos are taken from the respective establishments’ facebook pages.

Written by A. Nathanael Ho.