Food fight, lah: who will eat their words in Singapore-Malaysia hawker battle?
In Malaysian food courts, there’s something on everybody’s lips – a lingering question about whether, when it comes to comparing cuisines, Singaporeans are just being ‘kiasu’
It is past 6pm in a suburb just outside Kuala Lumpur and an outdoor night hawker market – that staple of Malaysian daily life – is slowly coming to life.
Plastic stools and foldable tables are dragged into place, and the smell of char kway teow, curry mee, and satay wafts through the air as hawkers prepare piping hot meals for a clientele that runs the gamut from the after-work crowd to nattering retirees.
There are no Michelin or Bib Gourmand guides luring customers to this spot – only word of mouth.
“Can finish by 10pm,” curry mee hawker Lee tells This Week in Asia of his usual working hours as another customer orders a bowl of his speciality noodles drenched in spicy, coconut-laced gravy.
Some 350km south of Petaling Jaya, in the Amoy Street Food Centre within Singapore’s central business district, Gwern Khoo and Ben Tham keep an equally gruelling schedule at A Noodle Story, their Bib Gourmand-featured stall that serves a hybrid, wanton noodle-Japanese ramen dish they call “Singaporean ramen”. Theirs is by far the most popular stall in the food centre – helped on by scores of curious tourists ticking off their list of must-have Singaporean hawker fare.
The three hawkers refuse to be drawn into the debate raging on both sides of the Singapore-Malaysia Causeway: who has the better hawker fare?