Kristen Choong had accepted her family’s decades-old noodle stall in Singapore would likely fold when she retires.
Now, battling a 90 percent drop in business due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she is constantly having to reassure customers that the stall would survive the next few months.
“I really have [to] tell people, we’re still here. If we weren’t then it would be tragic... We’ll do our best to keep going,” said 45-year old Choong, who runs the Ji Ji Noodle House with her aging mother.
Photo: Reuters
Government orders last month for people to stay home to curb the disease abruptly halted a Singapore tradition of eating out at its more than 100 hawker centers — sprawling food courts serving up cheap regional cuisine.
This hawker culture — which has given rise to the world’s cheapest Michelin-starred meals is being considered for UNESCO status.
Ji Ji was started by Choong’s grandfather from a pushcart before it moved into Hong Lim Market in the 1970s when the government first built hawker centers to clean up the city-state.
The stall features in Michelin’s Singapore food guide.
Choong said she has been given a three-month rent waiver from the government during the lockdown, and, like many others, has started a food delivery sideline to keep the business going.
Even before the pandemic, Singapore’s hawkers faced a problem. Many are getting older and their better-educated sons and daughters are shunning cramped, sweaty kitchens for office jobs.
Choong took over from her mother, Lai Yau Kiew, but she said “no one wants to inherit” such a labor-intensive job that involves boiling and frying wontons, vegetables, meat and noodles from 5am to 10pm every day.
“My heart tells me to just take it one day at a time,” said Lai, 69, who comes by the stall every day to help her daughter.
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