Address: Blk 209 Hougang Street 21, Kovan Hougang Market & Food Centre, Stall
01-05 Singapore 530209

The election for the next government of Singapore had been concluded yesterday. The main battle for the people’s vote was fought in Aljunied (a constituency in Singapore that encompasses part of Hougang Street 21, thus the convenient linkage between food and politics). The People’s Action Party (PAP) versus the Worker’s Party (WP), the former focusing on bread and butter issues and the latter on the idealism of an alternative voice in our Parliament - the make-up of which has been overwhelmingly dominated by PAP since the independence of our small nation.

Another side issue was that the seemingly pro-opposition areas in Singapore have a high concentration of Teochew Chinese dialect people. For about close to 20 years, the 2 sole opposition members in Parliament were perceived to be riding on their popularity with the Teochew Chinese. The PAP dangles many benefits in a bid to sway the voters to forsake the opposition, but to no avail. I salute these voters (both Teochew and others).

However, WP did not manage to win Aljunied, maybe not enough Teochews there. Also, I guess the concerns of your everyday, average Singaporean was on putting food on the table rather than embracing the wind of change (Scorpions fans..sing with me…down to Gorky Park, listening to the wind of change…). Oh well, let us hope for a development in the next election, 5 years down the road.

Kovan Hougang Market & Food Centre is the typical food centre that is commonly found in all housing estates in Singapore - part of the PAP government’s masterplan to ensure the citizens are well fed and taken care of. The PAP has a plan for everything and everyone. If you want to see frighteningly efficient social engineering at work, do come down to Singapore.

My friends and I were also focusing on getting food on the table. The famous Fa Ji Minced Meat Noodles (or in Hokkien, Bah Chor Mee). Singaporeans use the length of the queue to judge the quality of the food served. And Fa Ji scored in this department, considering that there were like 3 or 4 other stalls selling the same dish.

Believing in equality of the sexes, we sent the sole female member of our gang to queue up and buy the food…heh heh. No lar, we are not being MCPs here, she volunteered.

The young chap that is the cook is probably the most polite hawker in Singapore. He gives an earnest thank you to everyone of his customers. Not to mention that he is quite a cool dude (he wears a single earring…ok ..I am shallow…I associate people with earrings as cool..). He is quick with his hands and obviously takes pride in his work. Not many people can say that nowadays. Respect!

While waiting impatiently for our food to be served, we had ice cold sugar cane drinks (S$1). The green juice is extracted by crushing the sugar cane. Sweet, refreshing, it is a natural thirst quencher. There is an option of adding lemon slices to the drink… will cost you about S$0.50 more.

The Minced Meat Noodles (S$2.50) were huge!!! Loaded with ingredients like fish balls, meat balls, mushroom slices, fish cakes, lettuce, pork lard pieces and most importantly the minced meat.  I don’t think you can get the same quantity at this price in Singapore any more. We had 2 different kinds of noodles, Mee Pok (the yellow flat noodles) and Mee Kia (literal translation means kid noodles, they are made thinner). I recommend the Mee Kia and to request for extra chilli if you can take the heat - the resulting mixture just looks better.

No compromise was made on the quality of the noodles either. The noodles were not starchy and were well separated - each individual strand was distinct. The chilli sauce blended well with the ingredients. Trust me when I say this is real comfort food. I am just so happy that it was so cheap and good (twin mantras that I live by…as do many Singaporeans).

To finish off, we had traditional local desserts.

Long before we had western dessert franchises like Ben & Jerry’s and Haagen Dazs, the traditional local dessert makers had the gumption to provide their customers with a wide range of varieties and flavours, satisfying the sweet tooth of young and old alike. What I am trying to get at is that we should not discount our local entrepreneurs and businesses - they may not be able to command big market shares and build global brand names, but there is some nugget of innovation and ingenuity there for them to survive till today.

We had from left, clockwise the Peach with Sea Coconut (S$2.50, anyone knows what the heck Sea Coconut is? Is it a fancy name for coconuts that fall into the sea), the Peach with Coco Nata (S$2.50 and what is Coco Nata…anyone?) and the Ice Kacang (S$2, the mountain of ice covering a pile of red beans and atap seeds and layered with lots of coloured syrup and sweetcorn.).

A fitting end to a nice dinner.