no. 80: marvels of noodle cookery
I have a piece in Vittles Magazine this week, on how government policy has shaped hawker culture in Singapore (the piece is free to read – I’m told the paywall acts a little funky, but I promise it’s accessible and you don’t even have to put in your email). We were trying to fit 60 years of history into under 3000 words, and there was a lot of material that would have enriched that essay that didn’t make it in. So this issue is the first of what I suspect will be a series of addenda to that essay.
It’s also a reminder that I’m serving Hokkien mee at backbar today, 5pm-late. I’ll also have some kueh – onde onde and bengka ubi kayu. If you come, please do say hi.
Maybe everything you need to know about hawker policy can be summed up by a single meal at Nam Sing Hokkien Fried Mee.
The Singaporean version of Hokkien mee might be that rarest creature, a uniquely Singaporean dish. A blend of egg noodles and bee hoon (rice vermicelli) is first charred in a wok, then braised in a pork and seafood stock, with prawns and squid and strips of pork. It’s invariably served with sambal and a calamondin, for brightness. Nothing like it exists in Fujian, and in Malaysia, depending on where you are, the same order will get you one of three different dishes.
Nam Sing’s version is distinctive – the uncle uses bee hoon that’s thin as angel hair, not the usual spaghetti-thick sort, and a dish of sliced red chile in fish sauce replaces the sambal. There’s enough wok hei for a sense of warmth, but not the ringing fragrance some other places offer. The real appeal is the robustness of the stock, and the way the bee hoon slips around the egg noodles, creating the illusion of a sauce. It’s a marvel of noodle cookery, marred only by the violence done to the strands, which get chopped short in the course of frying.
I started eating at Nam Sing by mistake.
The original stall is in Old Airport Road Food Centre, and its signboard says “Nam Sing Hokkien Fried Mee (Hougang)” – a reference to a neighborhood ten km away. In the 60s, when my mother was a teen, our family favored one particular hawker near the Hougang bus interchange. As hawkers did back then, he worked out of a pushcart with no refrigeration, cooking over a charcoal fire. His customers ate at tables in the street. That hawker got relocated in the 70s, and my family never found him again.
So the first time we went to Old Airport Road, the “(Hougang)” on Nam Sing’s sign caught my mother’s eye. They were closed that day, and on our next visit – uncle is old, and prone to taking random days off to nurse his many aches and pains (though he’s started posting his schedule on Instagram). But nostalgia made my mother persist, and eventually we managed to find them on a day they were open. It turned out that Nam Sing was not the hawker my mother was looking for, though the uncle knew exactly who my mum was talking about.1
In the course of sorting this out, we got the story of how Nam Sing began as cart in Chinatown in the 40s, then moved to the Simon Road Market in Hougang the 60s, when the government began to clear hawkers from the streets. By the time Simon Road Market was demolished in 1999, the original hawker had retired, and his sons relocated to Old Airport Road.
On my most recent trip to Singapore, I found myself in the newest, largest, and swankiest of the many many shopping malls on Orchard Road, the kind of mall where Louis Vuitton is probably not the most expensive store. There, in some subbasement, I stumbled upon a Nam Sing in a glitzed up food court. It’s run by the son of the hawker who spoke to my mum. Every stall there is an extension of a hawker operation that started somewhere else.
I didn’t get Hokkien mee that day. It was too early, and everything was closed (this is the best way to experience Orchard Road). Unlike in Old Airport Road, no one was there prepping.
If you’re just here for the food, my next pop-up will be another kueh event, at Elmendorf Baking Supplies on Sunday March 3. Time is tbd.
A few years later, my uncle ran into one of that lost hawker’s sons. He was a car salesman; none of his siblings had been interested in taking over the stall.
i’ll read your food stories!!