Unsurprisingly, the lighting is very cosy in the air-conditioned 21-seat cafe, which is filled with vintage furniture. “You feel at home here. The furniture is from my parents’ house after they downsized. My aunt and my dad still work at the electrical shop next door,” Wong says.
He is based full-time at the cafe with his mum, who writes down customers’ orders by hand. “There’s no point of sale machine – I can’t afford it yet! Whatever profit we make, we [reinvest] it here,” says Wong, who personally cooks at his shop.
The cafe serves as a central kitchen and pick-up point for Mum’s Ngoh Hiang customers, and for those who hanker for a hot meal on the spot. Unfortunately, it is now a little hard to find, and footfall has dwindled, as the area is under heavy construction for the upcoming expansion of the Thomson-East Coast Line.
“There are good days and bad days. I feel we have reached out to more people being here. But some days we don’t have any customers at all. If we didn’t start our business online, we would have died. It’s an advantage that we own this place, though we still have to pay for utilities,” Wong points out.
But he hopes to eventually “venture out” to open a takeaway shop for ngoh hiang. “Like a Mum’s Ngoh Hiang express kiosk,” he laughs. He also plans to introduce a teatime-friendly “meat and potato pressed sandwich” to go with his cafe’s coffee and tea selection.
