Where the place is the brand

Posted by noelbynature under Food, Lifestyle
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It’s funny for a place as small as Singapore, a number of our eating establishments stake their reputation on the name of a particular location - usually the name of a hawker centre or street. When you think about it, aren’t most restaurants named after the chef, owner or perhaps even theme? But it’s only in Singapore that you can find places being named for their former premises, such as this one:

yg wonders if people have tried to cash in on the names of famous hawker places:

the name of the very popular stall is hill street char kway teow. at chinatown complex, i have come across another stall with the same name. it is not uncommon to latch onto a name already known to people, especially if the stall had built up a reputation in its former centre. i am sure all of us have come across food stalls and shops having the same name or bearing the name of some defunct food or hawker centres.

is this a case of stallholders trying to cash in on a well-known name, like the case of the sungei road laksa? i did not know of the existence of two sungei road laksa stalls in the same area until some friends mentioned it. one is at kelantan lane and the other at jalan berseh.

yg muses further about eateries that have named themselves after their former location in food centre gone but name lives on. It seems to me that the location-brand eateries belong to a certain generation of food sellers - perhaps a period when time was slower in Singapore and reputations could be developed around a certain location. As Singapore’s landscape changes faster and faster, I wonder if we will see a day where eateries market themselves by where they’ve been, such as finding a hawker stall in Jurong marketing the former Toa Payoh, former-former Chinatown Curry Mee?

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