The Next Hawker Gen: Alive with a Twist
How a second-generation hawker is evolving our traditional duck rice to appeal to the younger generation.
Written by: Sophie Loh
Photos by: Melvin Chew
Hawker food is no stranger to all of us. It has always been part of our Singapore culture. Recently, there has been a small debate that the hawker industry is slowly dying. We look at one local hawker owner, Melvin Chew who's revamped the traditional duck rice recipe to appeal to the younger generation.
Meet Melvin Chew, a 41-year-old hawker stall owner of Jin Ji Teochew Braised Duck and Kway Chap. His stall was visited by the American celebrity chef, Anthony Bourdain, and Masterchef Judge (Singapore), Damian D’Silva.
Whenever we get our duck rice from hawker centres, it will only consist of rice and duck drizzled with gravy. However, Melvin’s duck rice Japanese bento has a unique Instagrammable twist. His duck rice consists of two perfectly cooked ramen eggs, pork belly, pickled vegetables, radish in between three yam rice balls.
Jin Ji Teochew was started by Melvin’s parents and the stall has been around since 1983. They faced many difficulties and worked long excruciating hours in their humble store. Sometimes, they would spend up to 16 hours there.
Melvin has a very strong belief that our Singapore hawker culture must continue, as he wants the future generations to appreciate, enjoy, and maintain our local traditional food cultures such as Char Kway Teow, Chicken Rice and Laksa.
“All of our hawker food comes from our pioneer generation so every food has its own story. Our pioneer generation had to come up with their dishes. I believe we should appreciate the hard work behind the food they made.”
When Melvin took over the business, the stall was not well-known and most of their customers were around their 70s. Furthermore, the family business was slowly dying.
Melvin had to quickly think of solutions on how to save his stall and how he could attract a larger demographic, especially the young crowd. Melvin did some research and found out that many people enjoyed Japanese food and were willing to pay more. Thus he decided to develop and express his dishes in a Japanese style, such as replacing the typical Chinese egg with a Japanese onsen egg.
“The reason why I made some changes is because I wanted the youngsters to understand more about duck rice, especially kway chap. Presentation is very important as these youngsters would take pictures and share it on their social media,” he shared. "Hence, I decided to use social media as a way to share about my food and store. It worked! Slowly, more customers were coming to our store,” Melvin explained.
Melvin noted that technology has changed the hawker industry throughout the years. Technology has helped other hawker stall owners to save a lot of strength and manpower when making the food such as high-pressure cooker, mass-production machines. However, these technologies have also caused some new incoming hawker owners to take shortcuts.
The local hawker industry is constantly evolving. Melvin observed that over the year, the price of the ingredients and the rent of his stall has risen. The older generation prefers street hawker food such as our Char Kway Teow. However, he observed that the younger generation prefers commercial food such as canned and jarred food. He is afraid that our beloved local food will no longer exist.
“If you want to enter the hawker industry, you have to do a lot of research and not go into the battlefield blindly,” Melvin said. Additionally, they need to have high tolerance and persevere as business hours are long.
