B L O G P A S T O R

SIA captain’s wantan mee

February 20th, 2008

I wonder if anyone remembers her? For some years she sold her family’s delicious wantan noodles at $2 a bowl at the Ngee Ann Polytechnic Mechanical Engineering Canteen 4 to long queues of hungry students. She has since retired. But she was more famous than many have realized. She was once featured in the Straits Times(click on pic for pop-up) in 1970 as the girl who walked more than 30,000 miles (the earth’s circumference is only 24,900 miles) as at the time the article was written. This is not surprising as she started hawking at seven with her later- to- be-blind father. Selling the noodles in the 1950’s at 30 cents per bowl the family plied their popular noodles from Telok Kurau down the East Coast Rd, St Patrick’s School, Dunbar Walk and Cold Stream Avenue. Those were the days where they knocked two bamboo tick-tock sticks in a unique rhythm to solicit customers and provided a delivery service that rivalled today’s best.

Why am I writing about this? Well on Sunday I had to opportunity to have lunch with my wife’s former classmates, and the husband Nicolas, was one of the hardworking brothers of Ah Fong. He was trying to reprise the old recipe but by his own admission, could not, because in the good old days they ground the chilli, and made their own noodles from duck eggs and flour without water. He could only blend the chilli and buy the noodles, and the secret ingredient- pork lard- was not added. No wonder it scored 6 out of 10. But nevertheless the company, hospitality and light banter was the main thing.

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