Page 71 - Our Hawker Stories
P. 71
A few days back, my parents went to the Tampines Round
Market & Food Centre for the project. When I stepped
into the centre, an awaiting aroma of chicken rice came
to greet me, but my saliva couldn’t stay in place. My
mother and I passed by a stall that sells chinese pancakes
and other snacks. We decided to buy some pancakes for
my grandmother, who likes to eat them.
The pancakes come in different kinds of flavours, like
peanuts and red beans. The pancakes have a golden-
brown covering and a fluffy texture. They are slightly
moist inside, mostly like a combination of the usual
pancakes and waffles. My favourite flavour is peanuts as
the peanuts are ground with sugar, which gives off their
sweet texture, and it is crunchy.
The hawker who owns the stall has been working for 16 Nowadays, I find that it is not easy to find all these
years. He said that he chose hawker because he finds yummy traditional foods, as people are growing into
hawker more flexible, and he can manage his own time the modern type of food. Luckily, we still have all these
properly. The challenges the hawker faces are that the hawker centres where we can enjoy all sorts of unique
hawker centre are in the heartland, and the things he and traditional foods that hold wonderful stories.
sells have to be lower in prices, not like those in the
central area or shopping centre, where the price is
higher. He said that he only sells one for $1, and for
cheese, he only sells at $1.20, which is very economical “For just a dollar, I tasted history. Hawker
and reasonable, so everyone is able to buy his pancake. food is more than cheap and yummy — it’s
the flavour of Singapore’s past that is still
The hawker said that Singapore’s hawker culture is alive today.”
essential because it is all the authentic food that all
Singaporeans have been eating since they were young.
If you go to a shopping centre, you may find food Tan Yi Xin
that is not really authentic. That is why the Singapore P5 Care
government preserves the hawker centres. Red Swastika School
Our Hawker Stories 67
