the stall

Ah Wei's family has a stall.

In the gang, that means something. Everybody else's house is just a house. Ah Wei's family has a stall, on the hawker row, where the food comes from, where the uncle stands in the steam from before the sun is properly up and makes the char kuey teow that people drive in from other kampungs for. Ah Wei grew up in that steam. It is why Ah Wei is the way he is about food, which is that he will not let a single bit of it be wasted, ever, because in his family food is the whole point of getting up.

And the gang goes past Ah Wei's stall all the time. We never go to it. It is a place we pass on the way to somewhere we have decided is more important. We have never once gone there because it was the place we were going.

So I decided to give Ah Wei's stall a proper visit. A real one. As real customers.

Naturally, I turned it into an inspection.

"It is going to get a review," I told the gang. "A proper one. Stars. Like the famous restaurants. We will inspect it, and rate it, and make it official."

I had a clipboard. The clipboard was a maths exercise book with the cover torn off, which is the most official thing I own. Aiman appointed himself the food critic, on the grounds that his opinion was worth money, and charged us for it in advance. Kavi was the photographer. Kavi did not have a camera. Kavi took the photographs by shouting CLICK very loudly and describing the picture he would have taken. Pei Pei came to observe. Divya came because she knew it would go wrong and wanted to be there in person for once instead of just hearing about it after.

We arrived at the stall in the breakfast rush and I asked, formally, for our booking.

There is no booking. There are no tables. There is a bench, and there are stools, and there is a queue, and there is the uncle in the steam with a wok the size of a small boat, going fast, never stopping. The uncle looked at me asking for a booking the way you look at a chicken that has wandered up and asked you for directions. Then he went back to the wok, because the queue does not wait while a chicken finds itself.

I started the inspection anyway. A good inspector does not need a table.

"Item one," I said, loudly, for the record, holding the clipboard. "The char kuey teow. We require a sample for tasting and rating."

Ah Wei's uncle put a plate down on the bench. Ah Wei's family does not charge the gang. That is its own kind of thing and I will not make a joke of it. The plate steamed. It smelled like the reason mornings exist.

"I will now describe the sample for the report," I announced, and I picked up the clipboard to write, which meant for one second I was not holding the plate with my eyes.

When I looked back the sample was gone.

Ah Wei had eaten it. Of course Ah Wei had eaten it. Ah Wei was standing there looking genuinely sorry, the way only Ah Wei can look sorry, which is sorry with his mouth still full, because to Ah Wei a plate of his uncle's char kuey teow going cold and un-eaten on a bench while a girl describes it into a maths book is not a sample. It is a tragedy. It is food being wasted, which is the one thing his whole family is against, and his hands had solved the tragedy before his head had a vote.

"Ah Wei," I said. "That was the evidence."

"It was getting cold," said Ah Wei, which, in his family, is a complete defence in any court.

So the uncle put down another plate.

I lifted the clipboard. I started to describe it. Ah Wei ate it.

This happened, I am not going to tell you how many times, because it is embarrassing for the inspection. Every time I tried to write the review, the thing I was reviewing went into Ah Wei, sadly, because wasting it would have been worse. By the end I had a clipboard with almost nothing written on it and Ah Wei had had breakfast about four times and the uncle had not slowed down for one second of any of it, because the queue does not care about stars, the queue cares about getting to the front.

And that is the real rule of a hawker stall, the one I had backwards all morning.

A hawker stall runs on the people who come back. Not the famous critic who turns up once with a clipboard. The one at the back of the queue, there every single morning, who does not need a menu, who the uncle already knows by their order before they say it.

I was writing a review like a visitor. And the whole time, Ah Wei had been trying to get the gang to just come. To be the people who come back. To choose his uncle's stall as the place, the destination, the somewhere we were actually going, instead of the thing we pass.

The uncle put a plate down in front of me.

I had not ordered it. I had not asked. He just put it down, the right thing, the thing I would have ordered if I knew how to order at a place like that, and he turned straight back to the wok and the queue without a word, because that is what you do for the people who come.

Ah Wei did not eat this one. Ah Wei put a fork down next to it, and then he stepped back, and he watched me, the way you watch someone open a present you chose yourself.

So I put the clipboard down on the bench, with its one line of writing on it, and I ate.

It was the best thing I have ever eaten standing up at a bench in the steam. I am not going to give it a number. You cannot give that a number. A number is for a visitor.

I came back the next morning.

I did not bring the clipboard. I just got in the queue, at the back, where the regulars go, and I waited my turn like a person who was going to come back tomorrow too. The uncle saw me. He did not say anything.

He started a plate.