no. 39: prices paid

Hullo to readers old and new!

If you’re just joining us from Substack’s What to Read, welcome, and I’m delighted that you’re here. This week’s essay asks: How Much Should Hawker Food Cost in Singapore?

Somewhat unusually, it’s not in the body of this email.  Instead, I’m co-publishing it with my friends at New Naratif, and you can read it on their website (it’s currently free to read, but will eventually move behind their paywall, so I urge you to head over soon). 

New Naratif is a movement for democracy, freedom of expression, and freedom of information in Southeast Asia. If you live in Southeast Asia, or are interested in the region, I think you’ll enjoy their other work too, and urge you to consider supporting them – they are a beacon of independent, principled journalism in a part of the world where independent voices are all too easily silenced.

This essay echoes another one I wrote a while back, on what restaurants in New York would need to charge to pay their staff a living wage. Other themes you’ll find this newsletter returning to include the transformation of food into content, the very long view on what we eat, the cooks and bakers who don’t appear on food TV, and, of course, dessert.  

See you next week. Here’s to 2021. 

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This is a plate of nasi lemak at the Coconut Club, which my friend Eng Su founded so that he could charge what hawker food should cost.

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