The Social Concept of Shared Culture
IN A FOOD HALL SETTING
Culture is defined as a way of life, of a particular group of people [3].
Learning about food plays a significant role in understanding another person’s way of life. When we try to learn more about another person’s culture, we try to learn about the kind of food that a particular group of people eats, the way they cook it, the traditions that govern how they eat, and the places where this type of food is made available.
Visiting a traditional public market or a food hall is like peeking into the soul of a community. The kind of fresh produce is determined by the climate of the area, the geographic terrain of the land, the history of migration into the place, and the political and economic systems which support (or undermine) the local community’s food system. The prepared meals reflect the historic traditions practiced, the diversity of the community’s racial and ethnic profile, and the creativity of various vendors in creating a fusion among different cuisines.
The history of a food hall structure adds to its cultural dimension too. Renovated buildings which are currently used as markets or food halls are often rehabilitated market buildings or other types of structures which have a deep history connected with the community. Examples of these include the San Francisco Ferry Terminal Building (formerly a water transportation terminal), the DC Union Market Building (formerly a market warehouse), and the Detroit Ponce City Market (formerly a Sears, Roebuck & Company Building).
Tourism is a common angle when markets and food halls are visited for their cultural value. Tourists get to know a place’s culture through a community’s food markets [2]. Food tourists identify with a place by consuming food which is prepared by locals, characteristic of traditional cuisine, or farmed in a surrounding region [1]. Tourists look for authenticity and uniqueness in their food market experience, as a way to understand the culture of the place that they are visiting [2].
There is, however, a modern perspective on food culture which doesn’t have to involve tourism. It is a shared culture of food experience, focused on what locals prefer and consume. The Culinary Visions Panel is a US-based market research agency which identifies and analyzes food trends and insights among US consumers. Their “2017 Food Market Culture Report” concluded that food culture is widespread among US consumers, regardless of age [9]. 85% of respondents to this survey said that they like to go to events and festivals which are food related. Respondents identified food halls and farmers markets as their preferred types of food experience. This relatively new trend shows that the shared culture in a food hall environment does not have to be linked to a particular tradition or history but can instead be a shared tradition of love for a food-based experience.
Singapore’s hawker food stalls provide an example of the different dimensions by which a shared culture can be discerned, via a food hall experience.
Hawker food stalls in Singapore are managed by the government and are distributed in terms of location, all over the country [2]. They are comprised of small (approximately 100 square feet in area) food stalls, lined up in rows, and housed in open-air building structures [6,7]. Generally, the food fare offered in these stalls is based on the traditional cuisine of Singapore’s various ethnic population, like Malaysian, Chinese, and Indian. These stalls offer affordable food fare and are frequented by a wide range of Singapore’s resident population [2, 4, 7]. There are now over 100 hawker centers in Singapore, with more than 6,000 food stalls [5].
Newton Food Centre, Singapore
Row of Food Stalls
“In exchange for a mere $3.50, one receives a generous portion of poached chicken on oily rice served on an olive-green plate. You also get a plain broth (in which the chicken was cooked), a dark, sweet soy sauce, and the famed chili sauce without which the dish is incomplete. There is no pretension about Singapore’s national dish. It is efficient and rustic in both preparation and presentation. The first bite in and one knows that the hype is justified. The chicken is tender, albeit not the tastiest—Wee Nam Kee’s and Boon Tong Kee’s chicken is sweeter. But the fluffy rice is infused with the fragrant aromas of garlic, ginger and pandan. It is simply sublime when mixed with the rich dark sauce, the sweet and savory combining wonderfully. The chili, with its combination of sweet, sour, and tangy, lifts the palate and accentuates the chicken. It is little wonder why Gordon Ramsay bowed to the maestro behind this humble plate of rice.”
— Singapore Hawker Centers: Origins, Identity, Authenticity, and Distinction [7] Page 44
Singapore’s Hainanese chicken rice started out as a simple chicken dish in many of the hawker stalls around the country. Now it is considered to be Singapore’s national dish, a regular meal for the locals and highly sought out by visitors.
Historical Perspective
The first dimension of shared culture for these hawker stalls is its historical perspective. Singapore’s hawker food stalls originated from the street side vendors who were selling fresh produce and cooked food along the river in the 50s and 60s [5, 7]. Given concerns about hygiene and negative impact on traffic, the government in the 70s worked on housing these street vendors in open-air structures, with access to water and sewage facilities [5, 7].
Multiple Ethnicity
The second dimension of shared culture for these hawker centers is how they represent the coming together of the different ethnicities which comprise Singapore’s resident population [5, 7]. These food halls offer Chinese, Malay, and Indian cuisine. Given the multiple ethnicities in Singapore, the government has always worked on unifying Singapore with a sense of belonging and pride for its multiculturalism [5, 7]. In ensuring that these hawker stalls also represented the various ethnicity, the government successfully worked in creating public spaces where the different races come together, literally and figuratively.
“Singapore’s pre-independence history, as part of Malaya until 1965, was one fraught with racial tensions. As part of the colonial legacy, the population was racially segregated into residential enclaves. Race was thus the divisive factor, demarcating potential fault lines in the newly independent state. Fearing that physical segregation would foment distrust among racial communities, the government intentionally set out to reverse the physical separation of racial groups. The newly minted Housing Development Board thus relocated much of the population from racial enclaves to newly constructed high-rise estates. Multiracialism was imposed on the population in the form of racial quotas. The modern hawker center was created at this period, with a two-fold purpose. First, it consolidated all the hawkers into a centralized space that could be easily regulated. Second, it was to serve as a public social space to facilitate racial integration. The hawker center can thus be seen as one of the many sites deliberately constructed to reverse racial segregation”
— Singapore Hawker Centers: Origins, Identity, Authenticity, and Distinction [7], page 47
Newton Food Centre
Singapore Tourism Board promotional material
“The Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, the NEA’s parent ministry, has committed to provide a range of eating options, including Halal-certified food stalls, to serve Singapore’s multi-ethnic communities. Hawker centres are thus places where people of different races, religions and cultures mingle.”
— Hawker Centres, Levelling the Playing Field With Food [8]
Important Part of Daily Life
Third, these local food stalls represent Singaporean’s shared love affair with food [4, 6, 7]. One cannot talk about Singapore’s lifestyle without including food as part of the conversation. The recent movie “Crazy Rich Asians” devoted a substantial part to showing how different food traditions and experience form part of the lives of Singaporeans, from the hawker stalls as regular dining out places, to the parties where special ethnic food are prepared, to the family tradition of coming together to prepare dumplings. This love for food, along with the affordability and good locations of Singapore’s hawker stalls, contributed to the hawker stalls being a regular destination for most Singaporeans, across all income and ethnicity [7].
“Over the years, these hawker centres became a fundamental part of Singapore life. In a 2005 government survey, 37% of respondents said they were “very frequent” customers of hawker centres, eating in these places as often as eight times or more per month, or an average of at least twice a week.”
— Hawker Centres, Levelling the Playing Field With Food [8]
Newton Food Centre, Singapore
Open-air, cafeteria seating for lunch crowd diners
“Foodie” Culture
The fourth dimension of shared culture which can be seen from these hawker stalls is a relatively newer one, the “foodie” culture which started in the 90s [6, 7]. The younger generation in Singapore seized on the authentic food experience as a lifestyle and documented their hawker food finds in various social media. Because they can reach out directly to the proprietors of these food stalls, the “foodie” generation appreciated the authenticity in the way they experienced food in the hawker centers [4, 7]. Tam, however, differentiated Singaporean “foodies” from other global “foodies.” Singaporean “foodies” continued to rely on the taste and opinion of the majority of the hawker consumers, in terms of their recommendation as to what food stalls to look out for [7]. This deference to popular preference was unlike most “foodies” in other countries who promote themselves by having been the first to “discover” a particular food outlet or restaurant.
Newton Food Centre, Singapore
Young diners on their mobile phone in the foreground, with a traditional noodle stall in the background
The Singapore hawker stalls give us an example of how the government of Singapore used the concept of a food hall to manage a local tradition of street food vending and inadvertently managed to instill a sense of shared pride and belonging among its citizens. The Singaporeans embraced the hawker stall experience as part of their daily lives, and the younger “foodies” continued the tradition by valuing its authenticity. Singapore’s hawker stalls now form part of its national culture and identity, as documented in various books, promotional tourism campaigns, and movies.
Newton Food Centre, Singapore
Tourism Board promotional materials about Singapore and its food
Sources:
Montserrat Crespi-Vallbona and Darko Dimitrovski, 'Food Market Visitors: A Typology Proposal', British Food Journal, 118 (2016), 840.
———, 'Urban Food Markets in the Context of a Tourist Attraction: La Boqueria Market in Barcelona Spain', Tourism Geographies, 20 (2018), 397-417.
'Culture', in Cambridge Dictionary (United Kingdom, 2019).
Mark Rowe, 'Masters of the Stir-Fry; Singapore's Hawker Centres Offer a Feast for the Taste Buds at Very Digestible Prices.', 2011, p. 32.
'Singapore's Hawker Food Culture under Threat', National [Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates], 20 June 2017.
'Singapore Food Fling; from Hawker Centres to Michelin-Star Restaurants, These Are Some of the Hottest Places to Eat', Observer [Gladstone, Australia], 2 Dec. 2017, p. 10.
Andrew Tam, 'Singapore Hawker Centers: Origins, Identity, Authenticity, and Distinction', Gastronomica, 17 (2017), 44.
Ronnie Tay, 'Hawker Centres, Levelling the Playing Field with Food ', Urban Solutions 2014.
Tad Wilkes, 'Food Halls and Markets Still on-Trend ', in Hotel F&B (2017).