Mornings and breakfast: they’re not my usual style to be honest. But this past week, I’ve been enjoying a rare treat – having breakfast with my parents. It’s been very nice to have them around, and each morning we find ourselves at a nearby hawker and wet market centre, where rows of stalls are buzzing with activity and tables are brimming with customers who are mostly slurping up steaming bowls of minced meat and kway teow noodle soup.

While I’m not a fan of having kway teow noodle soup three days in a row, it gave me a chance to wander around the stalls and notice how, plainly put, food is an easy matter over here. No matter how bleary eyed you are in the morning, it’s really easy to figure out what you want to eat, because most stalls have a very blatant way of demonstrating what they serve. No confusing or fancy names, no nonsense. Just plain, simple food.

Let’s start breakfast with a refreshing drink. How about…

Plain and simple.

Or how about some…

Fish heads – mm, just what I crave the moment I get out of bed...

Then there are the names which require a bit of brain work:

But easy to figure out if you know some Mandarin. The last two characters literally mean ‘fish soup’.

There’s also another thing about food stalls in Singapore. Take this, a stall in a Bedok Market hawker centre has a name that reads:

This stall is named after another place ‘Siglap Market’. But it’s not just a fancy name, it holds a lot more meaning than a ‘Paris Bakery’ in Ponsonby. Here, famous foods get attached to certain locales.

Taking the name means taking the fame, or perhaps retaining the fame when a stall has relocated. But chances are that the current Siglap Market probably has a store with the exact same name.

Now, which is the TRUE Siglap Market Fried Carrot Cake stall? Well that’s hard to answer. Whether or not a stall is authentic, or even worthy of its fame, is a hot topic for Singaporeans, as is anything about food itself. Blogs have been written. Wars have been waged. The website “Hungry, go where?” rates and publishes grassroots reviews.

Fortunately, though I am a Singaporean and somewhat obsessed with food, I am not Singaporean enough to care about labels, authenticity, or quality (unless it’s horrendous, which is actually quite rare). Just give me some food which I can put in my mouth.

Which brings me to this… Once in a while you get a baffling sign.

Intriguing, fascinating, it instils trepidation and curiosity. You have no idea what they serve, but it appeals nevertheless. It’s full of promise and mystique, it reads…

I have yet to venture into the world of Kitchen Delights. Perhaps next time! Till then… I’ll just contend with a simple bowl of noodle soup.