Why Hawker Food Tastes better than Food Court Food

I ate a beef don at Thomson Plaza yesterday and I was amazed (or should I say disgusted?) at the food quality. There were like just 6 pieces of beef and the rice was soaked in a gravy that did not really taste japanese or anything. The miso soup was also terrible and tasted nothing like miso soup at all. All this cost me $5.50 and I would most probably never eat that again.

All the years in my life, I have always wondered why hawker food tastes so much better than food in the food courts.

Now, I think I know the answer why.

I used to think that it was the air-con in the food court that somehow affected the quality of the food. I then realised that it was not necessarily the air-con but the people that made all the difference.

I believe that most food court stalls are not actually owned by the people running it. There might be a small exception but I believe most stalls are actually owned and managed by the food court themselves. Many of them are actually hired by the food court themselves to operate the various stalls. These people (usually PRCs) are hired and are not the business owners.

They simply do not care about the quality of the food or the service that they provide. They are just there to make a living without having to bother about profits and customer service. I have seen these PRCs trying to speak Mandarin to Malays and Indians before... totally oblivious to the fact that these people do not understand them!

Compare this to the hawker centre where the stalls are runned by the owners themselves. The owners put in the effort to make sure that they smile at you (okay, some of them do smile) and at least maintain a reasonable standard of the food quality.

Hawker food for me always tastes way better than food court food. I don't know if it is true for you but it certainly is for me.

Not only is hawker food much nicer, it is often much cheaper too!