It might be an entirely forgotten dimension of our food heritage, but when it comes to food we completely misuse the term ‘hawker’. A hawker is essentially a peddlar, someone who travels about while selling his or her wares, and so when we talk about street hawkers we are really talking about roving cooks who sell meals from their portable kitchens. Another element of a hawker is the ‘calling out’, to announce the hawker’s presence in the neighbourhood and also the wares they sell. Today’s ‘hawker centre’ is a bit of a misnomer since nobody actually travels about selling their food, neither do they really call out to customers.


Of course, to stand out from the crowd, and also as a signature, street hawkers of old usually had distinctive calls to attract customers. Andy remembers some of the calls (and sounds) he heard when he was younger:

I remember my own encounter with these street hawkers along Geylang Road where they advertise their food with special hawker calls. The meat-bun man will shout his, “Char siew pau…” as he pushes his cart filled with hot, steaming buns in containers balanced over a charcoal fire.

Then there’s the chicken porridge man selling his, “Kaiiiii choke” and the won-ton noodle hawker’s assistant who strikes a small bamboo piece with a stick, using a rhythm beat to announce his delicious meal for 30 cents a bowl. “Tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tick, tick, tock…” I even recall the Indian rojak (spicy salad) who shouts his ware along the pavements of Geylang Road with, “Rojak, rojak…” Street sounds we call them. Or food sounds?

To be fair, the term hawker centre is being used less and less in favour of the term ‘food centres’, but the modern food centre in Singapore started out essentially as a collection of hawkers that were taken off the streets and settled into more permanent locations. As a final sound bite, what do Singapore street hawkers have in common with The King, Elvis? Andy in his 60s music blog makes the unusual connection in his post here.