A love letter written in a Hawker Center

We long for a taste that we can no longer acquire. If you grew up in Singapore, the hawker center is a place that most people consider as vital as a local library or community park: deeply embedded in our lives, quietly unassuming and, above all, an unknown landmark of the country’s heartland. As a child and teenager, I spent a lot of time in hawker centers.

I remember the smell of Epok Epok. [curry-stuffed fried dough parcels] my parents were shopping on their way to visit my late grandmother, who lived just one street away. I wasn’t a bright student in school, so when I failed my exams, my mother would give me a stern lecture, but she would still take me to eat a plate of Kacang Pool. [spiced bean stew with minced meat] and Cheng Tng [a sweet, light dessert broth] at the Bedok Food Centre, which I had always fondly referred to as Bedok Corner.

My dad used to slip me $2 bills and send me alone to my uncle’s drink stand as a way to help me socialize. As an introvert, I was terrified of interacting with people. From all indications, the loud, rowdy, disorderly energy of the hawker center seemed absolutely intimidating. But little by little I got used to all that because, ultimately, those were the sounds of home. It would be strange if we didn’t listen to them.

The same goes for smell. I once went on a date and sat down to a Thai meal on a steamboat at the Pasir Ris Central Hawker Centre. It was a nightmare. I hated every second of it. The sizzling of the oily broth stained my heart at the same time as it ruined my white shirt. I didn’t eat it again for months. But somehow, the fragrant aroma of bubbling broth and roasting meat dispelled all the resentment I felt at that moment.

When was the last time you ate and savored not only the food, but the event at which it took place? You don’t immediately canonize every memorable thing that happens to you, but when you do, and the more you do it, you remember the fragments that shape those memories.

There was one occasion when I was drinking a cup of soy milk that my parents had bought earlier at the hawker center, along with my favorite Youtiao. [a long golden-brown deep-fried strip of wheat flour dough]. All this time, I had been lounging in my father’s childhood bedroom, going through my late grandmother’s stamp collection (I miss her dearly). And that’s when I saw a black apparition floating next to a giant Radiohead sticker he’d stuck to his closet door in his youth. I had just started with Youtiao, but I dropped everything and ran out of the house barefoot.

It came down to this: in every central memory of my life—pain, pleasure, and everything in between—the hawker center had played a role. I am who I am thanks to the memories associated with this space. But I don’t want to personify it too much because, well, it becomes an emotional vessel that bounces off the energy you give it. It can be anything: a heartbreak, a marriage proposal, an informal dinner with classmates, or simply the need to eat.

And yet, when I try to trace these memories back to something concrete, they elude me. I tried to remember which exact stall I bought it from, but I couldn’t. That’s the problem with these places. We take them for granted. I remember the feeling of walking down the hallway right outside my late grandmother’s apartment, letting the heat dissipate in my hand through the red plastic bag. The journey continues, I still don’t know where the starting point was. Does the position already exist? Or was it replaced by something else?

Now I am at the entrance of the hawker center and I have already lost my sense of direction. I don’t know where everything is anymore. Everything is variable. Speculative. I’m still searching for that Youtiao. And I won’t give up until I find it.

Everyone does the ritual. You place a package of tissue paper on an empty table. Leave your expensive belongings behind. Queue in a row. Pace yourself anxiously and decide what to order. I think I recognize the guy behind the counter. He doesn’t remember me. Why would I do it? I am one of the thousands of faces you have seen over the decades since you settled here. At most, I’m slightly delayed. Someone who takes too long, who forgets to take out the payment application on time, who delays the queue. It costs $1.20 a piece. Is this even the stall I once frequented in my youth? I cling to hope and receive the red plastic bag from the uncle.

It feels good. Its weight, the same heat pressing through the thin layer of plastic into my palm. For a moment I allow myself to believe that this is it. That I have found the exact place, the exact flavor that was a piece of my childhood. I sat back down at the table. The same choreography unfolds around me. My experience is not unique. The sounds of water splashing in a sink. The smell of 鑊氣 [wok hei].

I open the bag and its contents seem correct. The golden brown tone. The subtle shine of the oil. I take a bite, slowly, as if being self-aware might bring back a new memory. But it doesn’t arrive as expected. There is no sudden collapse of time, nor a continuous return. The flavor exists today, in this very hour, in this very minute, detached from everything that had clung to it. It has an incredible flavor. But nothing exactly like my childhood.

Back then, there was no comparison to be made. I wasn’t comparing the taste to anything; rather, it simply arrived and became part of the moment. Food was not an object of reflection but part of the background of life. Now, I arrive with memory pre-installed, and the current present is forced to compete with it. What I’m really tasting is not the difference in the food, but the difference in how I can receive it.

Then I realized that nothing was wrong with me either. Not the position, not the guy, much less the food. It was kept exactly as it needed to be. My memory insists on something else, trying to complete a piece of the puzzle that no longer exists. Memories do not function as exact recordings but rather as reconstructions of past events. The difference between memory and a Super 8 film is that one preserves the emotion, the other everything else. Unfortunately, or fortunately, emotions override everything and fill in the gaps using our pre-presented expectations and prejudices.

I finished the meal. Not because it is the same, but because it is not. It becomes another memory for maybe 10 more years when I go back and try another approach. In the end, they all choose to stand on a trap door that opens into a dark, free-falling pit that is nostalgia. But why?

Continuity. It assures us that our past and present belong to the same person. We choose to do so because, even if it distorts our memories, it anchors us to the coherence of the self. Despite change, loss, and time apart, we ultimately remain recognizable as ourselves. That’s the purpose of nostalgia.

What does all this amount to in the end? I told myself there was no point in pursuing something that only existed in fragments. Around me, a tray is removed before the next person takes a seat. A family talks loudly over a plate of Rojak [salad dish of vegetables, fruits, and sugar dressing]. Nothing stops long enough for me to come to something complete. It is a habit that we humans have of returning to something that no longer has a center.

The beauty of this adventure was the imperfection. And maybe that’s what unites us to this place. Not the food itself, but the universal understanding that we all do the same thing together. Go back, remember wrong and try again.

The mobile center does not belong to anyone in particular, but it welcomes us all in transit. We sit at the same tables, we repeat the same rituals, we inherit the same habits without being aware that they have been taught to us. At some point in the line and the first bite, between what we think we remember and what is actually on the plate in front of us, a shared experience takes shape. Not exact, not fixed. But quite recognizable. Something clearly ours. Something Singaporean.

Illustrations by Lee Chu Xin

Once you’re done with this story, click here to catch up on our May 2026 issue.