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Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

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Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#51

Post by abjwam »

saryant wrote: post #48
contingencies wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bangkok is much cheaper and has more variety than Singapore. It has real communities from different parts of the region and the world who maintain their culture, run their own schools, and speak their own languages... not some kind of silly-Singlish with cheapened versions of iconic dishes of everywhere, like this Michelin stared foodstall selling soy sauce meat. The ignorance of western culinary practitioners to mai…

Bangkok more diverse than Singapore? That doesn't really ring true. That and the fact that Singaporean students are required to study their mother language in addition to English. Also—aren't most Chinese-Singaporeans of Hokkien or Cantonese ancestry? Their forbears likely didn't speak Mandarin. For that matter, Hokkien was the dominant Chinese dialect in Singapore until relatively recently.

I don't know what is the obsession of westerners with Cantonese. There are several chinese languages spoken in Singapore. The most widely spoken is Hokkien (~50% in singapore) followed by the Teochew language (~25% of chinese in singapore). Cantonese is spoken by much fewer people in Singapore as well as in mainland China.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#52

Post by 3legcat »

hiou wrote: post #49

* > Incredibly, the 51-year-old, who works 17 hours a day* Could anyone comment on if this is an exaggeration? After commuting plus basic life tasks like bathing etc, this would allow him for a realistic maximum of 5 hours of sleep a day. And that is optimistic as likely this results in about 4 hours a day. It seems like the story of a person who has gone 35 years on 4 hours of sleep a day is possibly more interestin…

Based on my impression of the hawker trade in Singapore, this is pausible. I am guessing his 17 hours probably consists of the following:

2-3 hours of food preparation in the early morning. 12 hours of manning his stall. The remaining hours for commuting and other work things maybe.

It is likely with the michelin star he can work fewer hours. He can choose to close his stall once he sells all his meat.

It is a hard way of making a living.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#53

Post by azernik »

fpgaminer wrote: post #34
yomly wrote: post #12

Really fantastic achievement and a really down to earth take on food - good to see Michelin not adopting a stuffy elitist stance on their awards. I shudder, however, when I think of the queues to try this tasty goodness. For reference, queues can easily top 90 mins if a hawker stall is locally well reviewed! And just over the sea, the queues for Tim Ho Wan (Michelin star dim sum in Hong Kong) are also already oppress…

Queues like that always make me wonder if the restaurant is charging enough. If demand is outstripping supply, perhaps they should raise the prices until they have _just_ enough customers. Otherwise it seems like they're throwing money away and not capitalizing on success. It's the Pulp Fiction $5 shake; if your food is good enough people will certainly pay more for it, even if the price seems absurd at first. Note:…

One reason might be too attract a certain kind of clientele. I know AirBnB people who charge less than what the market will bear, because they know that at a higher price point customers will be much more demanding - both because of the psychological impact of paying more, but also because the kind of people who can afford $100/night are likely to be older and more picky.

Similarly, by charging less and having a line out the door you get to enforce standardization and other nice things on your customer base.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#54

Post by princeb »

abjwam wrote: post #51
saryant wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bangkok more diverse than Singapore? That doesn't really ring true. That and the fact that Singaporean students are required to study their mother language in addition to English. Also—aren't most Chinese-Singaporeans of Hokkien or Cantonese ancestry? Their forbears likely didn't speak Mandarin. For that matter, Hokkien was the dominant Chinese dialect in Singapore until relatively recently.

I don't know what is the obsession of westerners with Cantonese. There are several chinese languages spoken in Singapore. The most widely spoken is Hokkien (~50% in singapore) followed by the Teochew language (~25% of chinese in singapore). Cantonese is spoken by much fewer people in Singapore as well as in mainland China.

in the US the chinatowns (used to be) largely populated by toisanese emigrants. it is now mostly HK/China prestige yue and mandarin speakers, but the traditional image of the american Chinatown is seiyap.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#55

Post by smallnamespace »

abjwam wrote: post #51
saryant wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bangkok more diverse than Singapore? That doesn't really ring true. That and the fact that Singaporean students are required to study their mother language in addition to English. Also—aren't most Chinese-Singaporeans of Hokkien or Cantonese ancestry? Their forbears likely didn't speak Mandarin. For that matter, Hokkien was the dominant Chinese dialect in Singapore until relatively recently.

I don't know what is the obsession of westerners with Cantonese. There are several chinese languages spoken in Singapore. The most widely spoken is Hokkien (~50% in singapore) followed by the Teochew language (~25% of chinese in singapore). Cantonese is spoken by much fewer people in Singapore as well as in mainland China.

It's due to the fact that Cantonese is the main language that Westerners will encounter if they ever visit their local Chinatown.

Singapore is actually unusual compared to other diaspora communities in that most of the emigrants were from Fujian province, not Canton.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#56

Post by abjwam »

smallnamespace wrote: post #55
abjwam wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what is the obsession of westerners with Cantonese. There are several chinese languages spoken in Singapore. The most widely spoken is Hokkien (~50% in singapore) followed by the Teochew language (~25% of chinese in singapore). Cantonese is spoken by much fewer people in Singapore as well as in mainland China.

It's due to the fact that Cantonese is the main language that Westerners will encounter if they ever visit their local Chinatown. Singapore is actually unusual compared to other diaspora communities in that most of the emigrants were from Fujian province, not Canton.

Don't think that's true. I'm in southeast asia and the largest chinese language groups in the following countries are:

Singapore: Hokkien

Indonesia: Teochew

Philippines: Hokkien

Malaysia: Hokkien (although cantonese popular there)

Thailand: Teochew

Teochew and Hokkien are actually part of the min-nan dialect group which also includes Taiwanese.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#57

Post by dak1 »

Retric wrote: post #45
bjornsing wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how you call Washington D.C. a "town". That's a very modest description of the capital of the world's only superpower. :P Now, Järpen in Sweden is a town (with about 1400 inhabitants). It has a restaurant called Fäviken. This restaurant has two Michelin stars [1]. 1. https://www.viamichelin.com/web/Restaurant/Jarpen-83005-Favi...

China clearly qualifies as a superpower. Though, it's influence is more economic than military it still wields considerable influence on the global stage. EX: This is more than a decade out of date, but it's a useful reference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpower#/media/File:1_AD_to...

Being classified as a "superpower" is a term in political science that means the country has the ability to project unparalleled influence on a global scale.

Don't let the prominence of discussions of China's "rise" fool you though, it is most certainly not a superpower. It certainly has the capacity to be one some day, but its power projection capability is fairly restricted to its immediate vicinity in East Asia still.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#58

Post by smallnamespace »

abjwam wrote: post #56
smallnamespace wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's due to the fact that Cantonese is the main language that Westerners will encounter if they ever visit their local Chinatown. Singapore is actually unusual compared to other diaspora communities in that most of the emigrants were from Fujian province, not Canton.

Don't think that's true. I'm in southeast asia and the largest chinese language groups in the following countries are: Singapore: Hokkien Indonesia: Teochew Philippines: Hokkien Malaysia: Hokkien (although cantonese popular there) Thailand: Teochew Teochew and Hokkien are actually part of the min-nan dialect group which also includes Taiwanese.

That's fair, but anything outside of SE Asia is predominantly Cantonese, hence why Westerners are familiar with it.

There's also the fact that the HK film industry was fairly dominant for a couple of decades--if a Westerner saw a Chinese-language film before the 90s, it almost certainly had Cantonese in it.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#59

Post by prawn »

hiou wrote: post #49

* > Incredibly, the 51-year-old, who works 17 hours a day* Could anyone comment on if this is an exaggeration? After commuting plus basic life tasks like bathing etc, this would allow him for a realistic maximum of 5 hours of sleep a day. And that is optimistic as likely this results in about 4 hours a day. It seems like the story of a person who has gone 35 years on 4 hours of sleep a day is possibly more interestin…

I imagine that he was asked to describe his day and someone generated the number from that, which might've been exaggerated, might've included things like getting dressed, commute, "thinking about menu changes before bed", etc. The story is not better served by a modest number, after all.

Many of us would have days and weeks of high working hour counts, but very rarely would it be sustained for many months on end.

Re: Street food chef's stall becomes world's first to earn Michelin star

#60

Post by StanislavPetrov »

hiou wrote: post #49

* > Incredibly, the 51-year-old, who works 17 hours a day* Could anyone comment on if this is an exaggeration? After commuting plus basic life tasks like bathing etc, this would allow him for a realistic maximum of 5 hours of sleep a day. And that is optimistic as likely this results in about 4 hours a day. It seems like the story of a person who has gone 35 years on 4 hours of sleep a day is possibly more interestin…

It says 17 hours a day but it doesn't say anywhere in that article how many days he works, in which case he'd be able to recover (somewhat) on days off.
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