Do you see any in the West? Do you? Do you? I think Toa Payoh is about as far west as it gets. Or maybe Maxwell Market. This leads me to the distressing conclusion that all the good food is in the East. This is particularly sad for those of us in the West.
What I also find interesting is that many of these stalls are in famous hawker centres. Places like Maxwell Road or Old Airport Road or Serangoon Garden hawker centres seem to have a disproportionate amount of good food. This leads to the second conclusion that all the good food flocks together - and none of it is in the west. This makes us in the west damn sad, hungry and emaciated.
If I postulate that demand for good food should be distributed evenly across the island, why then is the supply of good food seemingly lumped into pockets, on the eastern side? Over both lunch and dinner, I posed this question to two friends, and they both tell me that the more good food in one place, the more people will go there. Apparently, Metcalfe's Law applies to food as well - if there is a variety of good food, there is an exponentially stronger draw because there is something for everyone and a variety of good food like satay or carrot cake will complement each other. However, in the case of foods that make up a meal by themself such as Bak Kut Teh or Chicken Rice or Hor Fun, this theory should not apply because they should be able to draw the crowds on their own. So there should still be stalls doling out good food and attracting crowds, even in ulu and nondescript coffee shops as long as they are within HDB estates.
We also learned in social studies that people will go to Sim Lim to buy computer parts or Queensway for shoes because there is more variety to choose from and prices to compare. But in the case of food, this doesn't apply because when you go to Serangoon Garden for Kway Chap, you know precisely which Kway Chap stall you are heading for, and anyway there is only one. So why does it matter whether the other stalls are any good?
My own theory is that a food abyss like the West should attract lots of hawkers, because there are tons of hungry people and nothing good to eat. So if you set up there by yourself, you may not have the pulling power to make people come all the way from Changi to eat your wonderful chicken rice, but you would already be surrounded by a vast hinterland of poor hungry souls who would make you a millionaire just by patronising your stall once a week.
It makes an awful lot of sense to me, why don't the hawkers see it that way?
Does anyone have food recommendation for the Western regions of the island?
(I know I'm just throwing this question to the wind because this blog only gets about 5 readers a day and two of them are probably me. Two more are overseas and have most likely never travelled further west than Clementi. But nevertheless helpful suggestions from the last guy would be very much appreciated.)
7 comments:
If you're asking me, well, err, I rarely venture too far unless invited by friends, and I'm not really led by my tastebuds either.
But I know that there is a good seafood (gong gong, crab, BBQ fish, etc.) stall at the food centre at Pasir Panjang Road.
The place is currently in a slump because of the Pasir Panjang MRT works, so you're almost guaranteed a place to sit and fast service.
I'm not sure about stuff further west, e.g. CCK, Jurong, etc.
I can't believe you're actually hypothesising about the lack of quality food in Singapore's Westside... you must have way too much time on your hands =)
The West does not attract as much attention as the East because unlike its "attas" cousin, it's less pretentious and does not requiring crass commercial advertising to market its quality, relying on good ole word of mouth among the heartlanders.
Frankly, I feel that most food stores are only popular because of peer influence and given the degrees of separation in Singapore, some modern day Paul Revere type person waxing lyrical about Bedok Market Ba Chor Mee is enough to cause a "Noodle Rush"
Coming from a person who's never lived nearer to Changi Airport than my current location, let me now educate you on the food virtues of the west.
Let's start with Fong Seng, the lifeblood of every NUS student...a stone's throw away is Holland V, though some of good stuff is slowly dissapearing. Moving south towards River Valley you have the dense food hubs in Tiong Bahru (Zhi Char, Chwee Kueh), Bukit Merah (Bak Kut Teh) and Zion Road/River Valley (Chai Tow Kueh, Nasi Padang). Swiftly heading west, both Jurong and Clementi markets offer top notch hawker fare at old-world prices.
Unfortunately, I'm now starving after writing all this so I have to stop before I start devouring my notepad...I haven't even described the Bukit Batok and Choa Chu Kang areas (which while I've never really frequented though I'm sure have their perennial favourites) or the more up market 6th Ave and Lorong Mambong
To put my geography in perspective, I guess I should add that I consider Clementi to be central, and Holland V and 6th Ave even more so.
To me, West is like Bukit Batok and Choa Chu Kang, which Donovan is confident has food, but Serene who lives there says no. It's probably not even on most people's maps.
im leaving a note to help make the pt that more than 3 sgporeans read your blog daily :)
youre rite tho, there isnt much food in west AFTER you discount holland v, jurong, clementi even boon lay. its okay, you can pig out on wkends & store it up... kinda like what squirrels do :P
So we can all get a lesson in Singapore geography, maybe we should refer to the official SMRT route map
Well if you divide a real map into western, central and eastern thirds, you'll see that Clementi falls quite nicely on the border between West and Centre.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mapshells/south_east_asia/singapore/singapore.htm
The boundary for the East would fall around Paya Lebar.
I guess what I didn't clarify earlier is that I consider Central to be a region as well.
But seriously, quit arguing over the semantics and tell me where the food is!
Look, here's someone else who agrees with me:
"If you like food, you should move to the east. At least this is what our friends who live out there tell us. And a recent weekend Business Times article seems to validate their claim."
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