Collectively, the almost 30,000 hawkers in Singapore, found in hawker centres, kopitiam (coffee shops), canteens, food courts and even food booths, offer us all a tale about who and what we are here. If you factor in Singapore’s size of just 725 sq km, the food playbook is very thick with deliciousness and history. The Unesco Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity award for the hawker food culture in Singapore is a mark of recognition of this organic culinary culture. It is expected to receive this inscription by 2021 and this opens up a fresh new world perspective on its possibilities, from international business opportunities, tourism, education, to entrepreneurism and more. But there lies a bug in its effort to address sustainability and continuity. Not many of the mobile lifestyle generation in Singapore are keen to join the trade and defend this food culture. Those old guns in the trade have huge problems attracting and hiring workers, assistants or even cooks. It is compounded by the manpower policies of the land that does not allow hiring of qualified foreigners who want the job. In some instances, you need to hire up to 1-4 Singaporeans (who shun these jobs) before you are allowed one to two foreign hires. A catch-22 situation that will deprive the trade of oxygen. We celebrate and support the sustainability of this Singapore Hawker Culture with this first online edition of Makansutra Singapore 2021. It is updated frequently, and you just view it here as often as you want for free, for the latest… like a scrumptious story unfurling. http://www.makansutra.com/ebook
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