Katong’s Makan Culture
I remember a time in the 50s and early 60s when itinerant hawkers ply the road where I lived. Some come on foot, others on carts on top of wheels, mostly in the day time, seldom at night. The "tock-tock" sound as bamboo stick held in one hand hits curved bamboo article held in the palm of the other hand announces the arrival of the konlo mee seller to the residents of Marshall Road. The char kway teow seller coming along the road would typically sound the bell fixed on his bicycle cart while Ang the Magnolia ice-cream man would hold up his small school bell and ring it vigorously as he moved down the road. Some hawkers like the ak bak seller, the char siew fun vendor and the yong tau foo man would shout out the name of their dishes as they heave under the weight of the pole bearing a full pot of soup or gravy at one end and a basket of ingredients on the other. Others like the wizened Boyanese lady selling rojak need not do so as the residents of Marshall Road know what time of the day they can be expected to turn up and eagerly wait out for them. Out would my neighbours spill, one by one, from the comfort of their homes and beckon to the hawkers to stop as they want to buy. A few would have an egg or two on hand for the char kway teow hawker. I,for one, would bring my own egg as it was cheaper to use mine than his. I would have with me 20 cents from my daily cake money of 30 cents to pay for a plate of delicious char kway teow fried to perfection in a large kwali under a charcoal fire. If you had more money to spare, you would splurge 30 or 50 cents on an up-size portion. I never had that luxury. In any case, a 20 cents plate was more than enough to satisfy me. Now and then, Ah Lau, if I remember his name correctly would stop frying to stoke the fire or add on an extra piece of firewood to it to keep the well-worn kwali and ingredients sizzling hot.
An aunt of mine in need of extra income to feed a growing family of 6 kids and to supplement her husband’s meager earnings took to making and selling her Nonya cakes. My male cousins, sweet-faced boys of 8 to 10 years of age, would go from door to door in our neighbourhood, carrying a couple of baskets between them, to ask "Bibik, mo beli kueh tak mo?". I don’t recall exactly what types of kueh they sold but I reckon they must have included the popular ones like onde onde, kueh bolu, apom balek among others. I do recall that they sold small packets of dried mee siam topped with a little sambal which were simply delicious.
Of all the hawkers, the friendliest was Ang the Magnolia ice-cream man. All the children in Marshall Road loved him and would come rushing out once they hear his bell from a distance. He was most avuncular - teased each of us and tolerated our incessant pouncing on his ice-cream cart and our ringing of his bell. There was a ledge at the edge of the cart which we rushed to clamber on so that tiny us could lift the cover of the ice-cream cart and look inside it to see the choices of ice-cream within. "Ang, Ang, Ang" we would address him, never prefixing it with "Uncle" or "Mr". Just "Ang". Some of us who were from Katong Convent knew him even better as he had an ice cream stall in the school. Lucky us! I remember often spending all of my 30 cents cake money exclusively on ice lollipops. At 5 cents each, I sometimes had 6 a day! Once in my excitement, I dropped an entire cone of ice cream soon after he handed it over to me. Ang would simply replace it with another without even batting an eyelid. Things like this made him our village hero. Ang would also tease the adults - parents of the children who ate his ice cream. Knowing my Mum had 12 kids and had no compunction shouting at us at the top of her voice regularly, he tongue-in-cheek nicknamed her "Radio Singapore".
As can be expected, all the eating temptations throughout the day took a toll on our regular meal times. Particularly after the char kway teow or the nanek’s rojak spiked with chili padi which I would lick clean. By dinner, I could not down a grain of rice. That would earn me a good earful from my mum. Around that time, my grandaunt Ko Po Chit had passed away and Mum had to take over the cooking. As Ko Po Chit did all the cooking previously, Mum was a novice in the kitchen. Her food, not surprisingly, fell way below the standard we were used to. So just as well we had our fill from the hawkers’! To be fair to my late Mum, she mastered the art of Peranakan cooking over the years and by the time she was in her late 70s, her bakwan kepiting, buah keluak, hee peow soup, assam masak udang , kuah lada, chap chye and other Peranakan dishes were tops in our books! We joked that her last years were her Renaissance Years!
Towards the mid to late 60s, there was a gradual decrease in the number of itinerant hawkers in Marshall Road. Wondered if it had to do with a policy to shift them to permanent stalls for public health reasons. Soon, Ah Lau the char kway teow man set up a permanent stall near the Singapore Swimming Club or the Chinese Swimming Club. Heard from family and neighbours that he was there and doing well but never ventured that far subsequently to seek him out. Of course he has since long gone, to where we do not know. The char siew fun seller we learned later set up a stall in a coffee shop in Joo Chiat Place. As for Ang, he was in Katong Convent for many years till he retired. Have no idea what happened to the others.
As the itinerant hawkers were phased out, "permanent" hawker stalls started to come up in the backlanes of East Coast Road, behind the row of shop houses there and adjacent to Marshall Road, just a few meters from our homes! We were often up and down the 5-foot way carrying packets of hawker fare or having supper in the stalls there! The konlo mee there was great and so was the oluak among others! I recall that the konlo mee stall holders were a handsome couple with a cute young son called An An whom the neighbours all adored. Beyond these backlane stalls, there were other famous eateries along East Coast Road near Ceylon Road and Joo Chiat Road. Also across the road too! It was not just the Katongnites who frequented these coffee shops but Singaporeans from other parts of the island as well. Katong Laksa, Roxy Laksa,ho pau, Hokien mee, Nonya kueh at Ah Per’s (Hokien for deaf mute, as he was the assistant there) stall, poh piah.. the list goes on. If we fancied cakes, there were Tay Ban Guan, Red House,Chin Mee Chin, Cona’s. For Western food like chicken chops, pork chops, there was Wonderland across from us which my younger sisters and I considered such a treat. If we wanted good nasi ramai, we went to the Malay stall in the coffee shop at the junction of Ceylon Road and East Coast Road. I used to accompany my granddad there twice a week when I was around 10 years old. Ah Kong would have his coffee and kueh kueh from Ah Per’s stall while I would have my "nasi sepuloh sen, daging separoh"(10 cents rice and half a piece of meat, in this case mutton), all for 25 cents, without fail.
So food became part of our culture in Katong and got embedded in our DNA.
Cherry Tan (Cherry Law)