Street food that wins a worldwide honor
This article is an adaptation of our weekly Travel newsletter that was originally sent out on February 2, 2021. Want this in your inbox? Subscribe here.
By George Stone, TRAVEL Executive Editor
Festivals, handicrafts, poetry, and music are among the nearly 500 vibrant practices and expressions inscribed on UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage lists. Chinese shadow puppetry and Argentine tango are tantalizing. But for me, one treasure rises above all others. And not for its subtlety.
Singapore’s clanging, banging, buzzing, fragrant, affordable, utterly delicious hawker centers sublimely merge cuisine, economy, comity, cultural identity, hospitality, and so much more into Malay noodles, Indian curry puffs, Hainanese-style chicken rice, and Peranakan laksa (lemongrass-coconut noodles). The city-state’s lively but endangered street food scene, featured in movies like Crazy Rich Asians, now has UNESCO status. (Pictured above, one Singaporean street food feast.)
“Some civilizations chronicle their pasts with art or books. Others pass on history orally through folklore. In Singapore, the tale of how a humble fishing village in Southeast Asia evolved into a buzzing modern metropolis often comes in spoonfuls of peppery pork rib soup or bites of fried egg noodles at its hawker centers,” writes Singapore native Rachel Ng in our story.
Protecting street food traditions is not just about flavor. “It’s about more than the hawkers and their food,” says local food legend K.F. Seetoh, who worked on the campaign to get hawker centers on the list. “It’s about the government’s play, the private sector’s part, and people’s affinity for it.”
I had the privilege of living in Singapore for a few years, and my dreams are still painted in a psychedelic swirl of scents, scenes, and piquant plates from my local food peregrinations. There is no better way to discover a community than at the dinner table. (Above left, a hawker preparing teh tarik—a traditional milk tea drink; on the right, a satay hawker cooking meat over charcoal.)
Historians and foodies hope that the UNESCO recognition will help raise the status of hawkers and inspire new cooks to join the fray. “We need to honor our hawkers,” says acclaimed food blogger Leslie Tay. “We need to put them on a pedestal and make them our local cultural heroes.”
“My most vivid childhood memory was going to the wet market with my grandmother and having a breakfast of chwee kueh (steamed rice cake with preserved radish) and warm soy milk at the hawker center,” says Ng. While tasty bites might not last long, the creative genius of these “cultural heroes” should last a lifetime—and beyond. (Pictured below, Customers sit at a kopitiam (coffeehouse) in a hawker center next to the Kebun Baru Birdsinging Club.)
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TODAY IN A MINUTE
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THE BIG TAKEAWAY
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YOUR INSTAGRAM OF THE DAY
Where the lobsters are: For nearly three decades, central Vietnam’s Phu Yen Province has been a center for farm-raised lobster. Photographer Tran Tuan Viettook this image of the lobsters’ homes, 13-foot square cages, linked together and placed in up to 33 feet of water for a year or so.
OVERHEARD AT NAT GEO
Tracking the snow leopard: Imagine the commitment of photographer and National Geographic Explorer Prasenjeet Yadav. Using camera traps, he observed this mature male snow leopard (above) for two years in northern India’s Spiti Valley. Exploring the region, Prasenjeet accompanied Nat Geo’s Peter Gwin in the latest episode of Overheard, our popular podcast. Up three miles in the Himalaya, along ledges where the leopards prowl lynx and blue sheep, Prasenjeet shows Peter fresh leopard tracks and takes him to a cave where a big cat had urinated. What happens next?
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IN A FEW WORDS
It’s the tenderness I care about. That’s the gift this morning that moves and holds me.
Raymond Carver, American writer, poet, From: The Gift
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ONE LAST GLIMPSE
Egg boy: That’s the informal name of an 18th-century statue in southern Thailand that has suddenly become popular since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Early fans claimed the statue brought winning lottery numbers and other wealth and success. Now thousands of Thais, many suffering from the collapse of the tourism industry, have begun streaming daily to Wat Chedi, the provincial Buddhist temple housing the statue. One tourist, named Diw, told Nat Geo: “I don’t really believe in this stuff, but I thought I’d give it a try.” (Pictured above, a pilgrim takes a selfie with a dressed-up replica of the statue outside the temple.)
This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, and Jen Tse selected the photographs. Kimberly Pecoraro and Gretchen Ortega helped produce this. Have an idea, a link, an international food you’re cooking up during the pandemic? We’d love to hear from you at david.beard@natgeo.com. And thanks for reading!
