The Street Food of Singapore

MONDAY MOORINGS – 42

?This edition of Monday Moorings ?gets its insights from a post by Rujuta Diwekar wherein she has extolled the benefits of home made food. She was reacting to Nikhil Kamath’s (@Zerodha) ?interview in which he mentioned about his recent visit to? Singapore. Not only that he found the street food of Singapore absolutely amazing, he stated that if people of India start eating out the way Singaporeans do, it would make the restaurant business worth investing in.

For the Singaporean street food what it is today, it happened because of the strict government policies & zoning policies. The government of the time displayed the desired political will to make all stakeholders come around. So, while they retained the street food, it was made available in zones or food courts so that the streets remain chaos free.

Street food is an integral part of the life pulse of most Asian countries with various governments doing some bit of tweaking here & there but avoiding complete culture change. This is done so to avoid any backlash or roughing up some feathers as the street food vendors come from poor strata & quality checks come at a price. The people they serve also come from the lower rungs. They would rather like the food be available at next street corner than in certain assigned zones.

However, story is same in India but with a lot of cultural & religious strappings. There is a large section of population which likes to home cooked food because of fiercely strong conventions & practices. The Indian family story telling cannot be complete without the home cooked food. The fables, the relationships – old & emerging, the festivals, events, cricket matches will not be complete without the home cooked food. A mother’s upbringing of her daughter isn’t complete until it is intertwined with cooking at home. India has its own share of street food. Samosa, Kachori, Poha, Tikki, Bhallla, Chaat Papdi, pakode etc. For a lot of people, it a cheap staple food available just around the corner, for others it is a break from the routine.

With 145 crores of multitude, the naysayers and protagonists will exist, continue their tug of war, each having sufficient numbers of followers to pull things their way. We have our own set of cultural, religious, societal moorings to guide us. Trust us to put the right foot forward.