From left: Coffee Break's Anna, Jack and Faye Sai brew coffee and serve up toasts with modern flavours at their Amoy Street Food Centre stall.First-time hawker Tan Wee Yang started Ah Tan Wings in 2017, out of a hawker stall in Yishun. In May, he opened his second stall at Maxwell Food Centre.
Even established hawker names like Koh Brother Pig's Organ Soup are feeling the pressure. Despite having seen queues since it opened in Tiong Bahru Food Centre in 1955, Thomas Koh, the founder's grandson who quit graphic designing to run the stall, says they are seeing lower profits every year. The applicants are also much younger, with an average age of 37 and the youngest at 28. Hawkers at NEA-run hawker centres have a median age of 60 years.
The onus, he explains,"is on ourselves", and the outcome will hinge on"how much hard work we put in".The duo began business in a hawker centre at Bedok North in December 2016, out of an interest to keep the hawker spirit alive, and focused on selling umeboshi, a type of preserved plum commonly eaten in Japan, with dishes like sous vide cod fish and braised pork belly.
With the new concept, the owners have applied some ideas from their culinary background. Different cooking techniques from other cuisines are employed."For example to add sweetness to the dish, instead of just throwing in a lot of sugar, we borrowed the French technique mirepoix," explains Mr Sim, who is also 28. It's a combination of three vegetables with high sugar content - onions, carrots and celery - that sweeten the soup naturally.
The 27-year-old's stall, Ah Tan Wings, specialises in har cheong gai that has been covered by food bloggers and online media outlets like Mothership.SG over the years. Alongside photos of the golden wings, popular food review website Miss Tam Chiak in 2018 wrote:"The wings were fragrant and juicy, but what stood out was how the chicken flesh also had the salty-sourness of the prawn paste.
"The media sort of saved me. Before the media write-ups, I was doing okay but it wasn't sustainable," says Mr Tan, adding that he pitched ideas to media outlets himself. The older generation of hawkers had an advantage in terms of experience, heritage and subsidised rents, he believes.
Source: News Formal (newsformal.com)
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