A remembrance of things past

Between recommendations from foodie friends, raves on Internet blogs, and television features, one gets the impression that there is seemingly a vast array of fabulous hawker fare around Singapore just waiting to be sampled. Yet the other day I tried a truly disappointing version of mee pok tar, which when coupled with a conversation with my uncle led me to conclude that the standard of hawker fare these days, sadly, flatters to deceive.

My uncle is a jovial man, quick to smile and always looking for the next opportunity to crack a quip or a witty remark – often at someone else’s expense. But even he sobered a little when the conversation turned to food and his hawker favourites, and he took on an air of resignation as he tried to think of anything he could wholeheartedly recommend. He gave up eventually, and left me with the advice that I would be better off going to Malaysia, where the erosion of quality is happening at a far slower pace than it is here.

I had long had the feeling that hawker fare in Singapore had steadily but noticeably declined since the days of my youth. In a matter of 15 or 20 years, familiar favourites had come and gone, and even the standards had lost some of their lustre. New hawkers in new stalls could not reproduce the wok hei so essential to the dishes I grew up eating, and the versions nowadays were pale imitations of what they should have tasted like. My uncle reminded me that this effect was not just a phenomenon of my lifetime, but one that had been happening since his time and the time of the generation before him. Hawkers come and go, secrets are lost to time; and standard hawker dishes change as one ages, often for the worse.

Why, exactly, is this erosion of quality happening? I tried to think of the reasons and could only come up with a few:

Passing of a generation. Hawkers come and go, and truly, the hawker’s business model is not one that lends itself to stable succession planning. First, much of the craft and the skills required to be successful – organisation, timing, an eye and a taste for ingredients – are intangible and do not easily lend themselves to be imparted readily.

Second, the truly successful hawkers, who can make their fortune through their chosen profession, invariably give their children access to greater opportunities thanks to their increased affluence. Their children go to better schools and universities and are exposed to higher education levels as well as a more diverse set of life experiences than their parents ever were. This robs the hawker of a natural heir – for often, their children forsake the family business for endeavours in other fields. Given the long hours, back-breaking work and slim margins associated with being a hawker – it is not hard to see why being a doctor or a lawyer or a banker represents a more comfortable option.

Without adequate heirs to take over their business, most of the great hawkers of generations past hung up their woks without leaving their secrets to the next generation. And over the course of three or four generations, this has contributed to the decline of the overall standards in hawker fare. A plate of char kway teow today is nothing like a plate of char kway teow that my uncle used to eat in his childhood. Even as I lament the fact that kids nowadays are growing up with a diminished conception of truly transcendent hawker food, I cannot help but think that I too, have grown up not knowing what true quality is. It is the curse of the sliding scale, and it is every bit as insidious as it sounds.

Ingredient quality and sourcing. One of the saddest parts about that truly disappointing bowl of mee pok tar was the quality of the noodles. They were factory-made, tasted artificial and were overcooked to compensate for their lack of texture. But what it illuminated was that even in hawker food, as in fine dining, the dish can only be the sum of its ingredients.

Over the years the scarcity of quality ingredients and increase in food prices have driven hawkers to make a multitude of difficult choices. To keep their food costs low, their prices competitive, and to protect their margins – they have been forced to settle for cheaper and lower quality black prawns, for example.

Even more importantly, they have been forced to turn to the dreaded ‘S’ word – sourcing. The hawkers of old made everything themselves, rising at ungodly hours of the morning to hand-roll dough for their noodles, or start basic sauces from scratch. These days, food manufacturers supply most hawkers with prepared foods such as noodles, the radish cakes for chye tow kuay, as well as sauces like char siew sauce for roast pork. Not only does quality suffer, but hawkers lose their ability to differentiate their product from the market. Everything winds up tasting more or less the same – a lowest common denominator down to which the standard of hawker fare is dragged.

Reactions to success. Even if, against all odds, a hawker happens to succeed by dint of a great recipe and a good amount of luck – where he or she goes from there is fraught with uncertainty. What happens more often than not is the onset of complacency. After building up a market reputation and a loyal customer base, many hawkers become complacent or lose their passion for making food that is good, honest and true. They take shortcuts, they cut corners. Without passion and dedication, even the best recipe has little chance of success after that.

But another possible reaction to success is the thought of growth and expansion, which very rarely has favourable consequences in the hawker business. Opening a branch or two, extending hours or increasing volume – all entail a change in the business model. Taking on another chef means that training him or her to replicate the taste of the original product is paramount. Increasing volume means that sourcing for ingredients that are of equal quality is critical. Many successful hawkers have compromised quality in the search for greater market share by opening branches; and more often than not the flavour of the original product is lost forever.

Increased health/hygiene considerations. Admitting this as a legitimate reason necessitates accepting that the best hawker food requires the use of unhealthy ingredients such as pork lard and MSG. It also necessitates acknowledging that solving for food safety is not as important as solving for taste. Neither of these assumptions is very strong, but it is perhaps fair to say that public demand for more healthful hawker fare and the stricter regulation of food safety knowledge and practices that come with urbanisation – have resulted in a changing if not diminished palate of hawker food.

So on the face of it there are lots of reasons for doom and gloom, enough cause for us to throw our hands up in utter despair and move to Malaysia. But my mother, in her infinite wisdom, put everything in perspective nicely. She, like my uncle, had aged through generations of hawkers, had found and lost different hawkers who prepared versions of dishes that she liked. Yet she remained rather more optimistic than despondent, and reasoned calmly to me that the decline of hawker food only made the search and discovery of the good hawkers much more worth it.

She had spent decades traversing the island, discovering stalls and food centres that she liked, keeping a mental picture of what was good where, and when it showed signs of slipping. To her, the excitement was in the chase, in the discovery. The fact that it got progressively more and more difficult as time went by, to locate stellar examples of traditional hawker dishes did not deter her from her quest. In fact, it made it that much sweeter when she finally did find something that tasted the way they made it in the good old days.

I wish I had my mother’s patience and forbearance. But I don’t, and I am destined to be a cranky old man.