12 Comments

Years (a decade?) ago Seetoh asserted that hawker / street food is a ‘cuisine’ —like Malay, French or Cantonese — and that as such can be reproduced, successfully, anywhere. I disagreed and was ripped apart rather nastily by the man (doesn’t like to be disagreed with apparently) and his sycophants. I no longer recall the details of my argument but I hold to my opinion still. Your beautifully written piece says it, not in so many words, so much better, more precisely and with more soul, than I ever could. Pretty sure I’d find a visit to Urban Hawker depressing.

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We did enjoy the Nanyang Kopi, it needs to be said.

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This is brilliant and honest, as well as a necessary response to inexplicable gushing. I grazed the stalls of Urban Hawker with two foodie friends on Sunday and was underwhelmed. Nothing we tried was terribly good or, for that matter. terribly bad. Nothing got finished. Nothing merited a return trip. Most incongruous of all was the glowing reviews from newspapers and magazines. To take one example, Steve Cuozzo, the food critic of the New York Post, wrote that Smokin' Joe Yeo's fish and chips were the best in New York. Seriously? I live most of the year in the UK and so don't bother much with fish and chips in New York. As a result, I don't know for a fact that Cuozzo was mistaken. But given how thin, dry and mushy the fish fillet was, I can only hope he was, at a minimum, half wrong.

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This piece is fantastic. You opened up many avenues for me to investigate in the time ahead.

For reference, I’m a NYC resident who has not yet visited Urban Hawker -- you distilled why I have not visited the location; better than I could have! Having also lived in Singapore for 6 months (in 2019), your analogy to the Subway represents an intriguing perspective for someone who has (to an extent) experienced both cultural artifacts.

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