There are some universal truths: kids love sugar. Except mine. And except it’s not sugar, it’s the food of my childhood.
I’ve always had a visceral reaction to food. How can you not? It can nourish you, comfort you, and excite you and it has always been a soundtrack to my life. I blame growing up in Singapore: early morning groceries? A charred plate of chai tow kway (fried carrot cake), extra dark soy sauce, and chilli on the side. Pre-choir practice break? Nissin cup noodles, tom yum flavour, purchased from the local 7-Eleven with as little water as humanly possible, eaten at the void deck of government housing blocks. Even daycare drop-offs, when I was little, were intimately linked to getting a plate of steamed chee cheong fun (rice noodle rolls) smothered with a thick sweet sauce and topped with a sprinkling of sesame seeds.
It was with this bubbling sense of excitement that I brought my two-year-old son to the market for his first breakfast in Singapore. In my usual fashion, I completely over-ordered - out came plates of roti prata with small bowls of steaming fish curry, kaya toast with soft eggs wobbling like a frightened bird, putu mayam with its side of grated coconut and sugar, and good ol’ economy fried bee hoon (so named because it’s so cheap to purchase), topped with chicken wings, a side of chilli and crispy fried luncheon meat. I set it in front of my son with glee - surely he would take to this like a fish to water?
The full kaya toast breakfast experience Source: Tammi Kwok
Turns out that disappointment was not too far around the corner and came crashing down on me like an unwanted houseguest right before you’ve got a chance to clean. He wouldn’t touch any of it, and it took the largest amount of cajoling to convince him to even try the kaya toast. These were foods we fed children, but how can this child, my child, want none of it? Did I need to demand a maternity test? Was he somehow switched at birth? Was a disownment in his near future?
Then it hit me: as much as I wanted to share my cultural identity with my son, it was just that. Mine. The omnipresent smells and sounds of the hawker centres in Singapore are not something I can recreate in Australia, and he will never understand what it’s like to unwind with a bowl of prawn noodle soup or glossy Hainan chicken rice after hours of after-school tutoring.
For all intents and purposes, he will most probably identify as Australian, and have more nostalgic memories of fairy bread than the Milo-dusted version of my childhood. I can only hope that his love for durian will persist beyond his teenage years and that my order of braised beef offal at our yum cha breakfasts in Cabramatta will not be a source of embarrassment in the future.
For now, I’m happy that we can share an order of pork satay with chunks of turmeric-stained lard threaded throughout the skewer, with an ice-cold pitcher of sugar cane juice on the side. And perhaps one day we can bond over a smoky supper of barbecued stingray, topped with fermented shrimp and sambal, while I regale him with stories of the midnight meals of my youth.
Economy fried beehoon is a nostaligic, cheap breakfast in found in hawker centres in Singapore Source: Tammi Kwok
Love the story? Follow the author here: Instagram @teafortammi. Photographs by Tammi Kwok.
