the stall

"Table for five," I said. "We have a booking."

Ah Wei's uncle did not look up. He was holding a wok the size of a small boat over a fire that was on fire on purpose, and he was throwing kuey teow around inside it faster than I think the law allows.

"No tables," he said. "Bench."

"We will take the bench. For our booking." I wrote *bench* on my clipboard. My clipboard is a maths exercise book with the cover torn off, which is the most official thing I own.

Behind me the gang stood in the line I had put them in. We had come to inspect the stall. A proper inspection, with stars, like the famous places that get written about in the paper. Ah Wei's family makes the char kuey teow that people drive across half of Johor for. Once a whole car drove over the Causeway from Singapore just to queue. They ate standing up and drove straight back. Ah Wei tells that story the way other people tell you about a wedding. Nobody had ever written the stall a review. I had decided I was the one who would, and the exercise book was where it would go.

"Why are we inspecting it," said Divya.

"Because nobody ever has."

"Because everybody just eats it," said Divya.

"That," I said, "is not a system."

I handed out the jobs. Aiman was the food critic, because he said his opinion was worth money, and he charged me for it before he had had a single opinion. Kavi was the photographer. Kavi does not have a camera. Kavi takes a photograph by shouting CLICK as loudly as a person can shout the word CLICK, and then telling you what the picture would have shown. Pei Pei came to watch. Divya came because she knew it would go wrong and she wanted to be in the room for it this time, instead of hearing about it after.

Ah Wei came because Ah Wei is always already there when there is food.

I decided to interview the chef first. That is what they do on the television. They lean on the counter and ask the chef about his journey.

"How long have you made the char kuey teow," I asked, leaning on the counter.

"Long," said the uncle. He did not look up.

"And what is your secret."

"Fire," said the uncle.

"Could you say more about the fire."

"Hot," said the uncle, and he tipped the whole wok sideways so a wall of flame went up taller than Kavi. Kavi shouted CLICK. That was the end of the interview, because the queue had moved and the uncle had moved with it. The man at the front held up two fingers. Two plates. The uncle had already started cooking before the man's hand was even all the way up. He knew the order from the hand. I wrote that down.

"Item one," I said, loud, for the record. "The char kuey teow. We will need a sample. For tasting. And rating."

The uncle put a plate on the bench. Ah Wei's family does not charge the gang. They never have.

The plate steamed. It smelled like the reason mornings were invented. I picked up my clipboard, because you cannot rate a sample without describing it first, and to write I had to look at the book, which meant that for one second I was not looking at the plate.

When I looked back the plate was empty.

Ah Wei was standing beside it. Ah Wei looked extremely sorry. He looked sorry with his mouth still full, which is a thing only Ah Wei knows how to do.

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

"It was getting cold," said Ah Wei.

In Ah Wei's family, *it was getting cold* is a complete defence in any court in the world.

"You ate the evidence."

"You cannot waste it," said Ah Wei, and he meant it more than I have ever meant anything in my life.

"Right. New plan. Photographer. The next plate, we photograph the second it lands, before anything can happen to it."

"CLICK," said Kavi, who had not waited for a next plate. "That one was beautiful. You could see the steam. You could nearly hear it."

The uncle put down another plate. He did not sigh. He did not look at any of us. He turned straight back to the wok, because the queue does not wait while a girl writes things in a book.

This time I did not pick up the book. I described the plate out loud, so my eyes never had to leave it.

"The noodles are," I said. "Shiny. There is a prawn. The prawn is also shiny. There is a cockle. Somebody remember the cockle."

"You are holding the only pencil," said Divya.

"Then remember it with your mind."

While I was busy not looking away from the plate, Aiman leaned in to deliver his professional opinion. Aiman's professional opinion arrived with a fork. By the time I turned my head the plate was empty, and Aiman was telling me, in the voice of a man who has eaten a whole breakfast, that it could maybe use a little more chilli.

"That is fifty sen for the verdict," said Aiman.

"You ate the verdict."

"Tasting is included in the verdict. The verdict is fifty sen."

"I do not have fifty sen."

"Then it is one ringgit," said Aiman, happily. With Aiman the price always goes up the moment you cannot pay. It is the only trick he has, and it works on me every time.

The uncle put down another plate.

I put my whole body over this one, both arms round it, the way you guard a thing you have already lost once. Nobody was getting this plate.

Then Pei Pei stepped in. She had gone off somewhere with a clothes peg and two lolly sticks, and she came back with a little lid on a spring, and she snapped it down over the plate. It worked. It worked perfectly. The plate was sealed. Ah Wei reached for it and could not get in. He looked at the lid the way you look at a locked door with your dinner behind it.

Then we found out we could not get the lid off either.

We pulled. Pei Pei pulled. Kavi pulled and shouted. And under the perfect lid, where nobody in the world could reach it, my sample went slowly, completely cold. Which is the one thing Ah Wei cannot stand. He stood there making a small sound, watching good food go to waste behind glass, suffering more than I have ever seen a person suffer at breakfast.

When the lid finally came off, the plate was cold. A cold plate is a wasted plate. Ah Wei fixed it the only way he knows.

"It was already cold," he said, with his mouth full. "That one does not even count."

So I put Kavi on guard. A plate needs a guard, and Kavi is so loud he keeps everybody back. I told Kavi to stand over the next plate, let nobody near it, and say nothing.

The uncle put down another plate. Kavi guarded it by standing over it and shouting "I AM GUARDING THE PLATE," with his arms out, turning in a slow circle so the whole hawker row would know the plate was under protection. He was so busy guarding the plate that he was not, in any way, looking at it. You can guess who was.

"Ah Wei," I said.

"It was the guarding," said Ah Wei. "The guarding made it worse. It looked so alone up there."

I am not going to tell you how many plates there were after that. It is not good for the inspection and it is not good for me. By the middle of it my whole review was still one line long. The line said *the noodles are shiny*. Ah Wei had eaten breakfast about five times, sadly, every single time. And the uncle had not stopped moving for one second of any of it.

By now the queue had noticed us. The queue is the most important thing at that stall. It is the uncles who have come every morning since before I was born. It is the aunties with their own containers from home. It is the man with the two fingers. There was even a lady checking a long ticket who kept saying she had a coach to catch. The queue does not care about stars. The queue cares about reaching the front. And it had now watched five children eat breakfast at the inspection bench and call it work.

"Are they paying," a man in the queue asked.

"It is an inspection," I said.

"Of what," the man asked, and he honestly wanted to know, because he had eaten here every morning for thirty years and nobody had ever told him it might not pass.

"It is going wrong," said Divya, beside me. She did not say it in a mean way. She said it the way you read out a score.

"I know it is going wrong."

"I came to watch it go wrong," said Divya. "I just want you to know I am extremely happy."

By then I had run out of plan. I had a famous stall, a whole book to fill, and one shiny line in it. I had a photographer with no camera, a critic who had eaten all the evidence, and a best friend beside me having the best morning of her life.

Then the uncle put down a plate in front of me.

I had not asked for it. It was not item anything. He just put it down, the right one, the one I would have ordered if I had known how a person orders at a place like that. Then he turned back to the wok without a word.

Ah Wei did not eat this one.

Ah Wei put a fork down beside it. Then he stepped back, and he watched me, the way you watch somebody open a present that you picked for them yourself.

I put the clipboard face-down on the bench, with its one shiny line. I picked up the fork. I ate.

It was the best thing I have ever eaten standing up. The book stayed face-down on the bench. I ate, and the queue went past, and Ah Wei watched me finish the whole plate like a man watching his team win.

I came back the next morning.

I did not bring the book. I got in the queue, at the back, where the regulars stand, behind the auntie with her container and the man with the two fingers. The uncle saw me. He did not say anything. He started a plate.

Ah Wei turned up beside me, because Ah Wei is always already there when there is food. He looked at the plate the uncle was making. He looked at me. I watched him decide, with his whole face, not to eat it.

"It is not getting cold," he said, like it cost him something.

"No," I said. "It is mine."

We stood in the steam and waited for it together.