Adrianna TanI got into a fight with a guy who I thought was extremely culturally ignorant about this. He was the ‘bring a a salad or a sandwich every day’ type of guy. He made a comment about how locals were so bad at cooking if we ate out all the time, and how he was surprised by that.
I was trying to make the point that it just worked differently there. Many lunch dishes were things we would never make at home. Take a bowl of Singapore chicken rice for example. Prob the most common lunch meal. It cost US$3 for the rice, the chicken, vegetables and the soup. This guy was confused at why we couldn’t just make it ourselves.
To make that, I would have to poach a chicken, hang it up overnight, butcher it, cook the rice with a lot of aromatics and chicken fat, boil the soup for at least a few hours. It would also cost more than that. And it wouldn’t even be half as good as the one I can buy. I’ve been working on my chicken rice for a decade and it isn’t remotely in the same quality group, and I’m a good cook.
Hawkers and street food sellers there have decades of experience, and economies of scale. They don’t sell anything else beyond the one thing! And also, it is super fun to be able to try hundreds of different things.
Not having that as my present daily food culture really kills me in some ways.
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