Crowded food stalls have always caught my eye.
Its reassuring seeing people standing in line, waiting patiently for the same dish. I find myself wondering what they know that I don’t. If ten people are willing to wait for something, perhaps there must be a reason.
I have followed queues before without knowing exactly what I was getting into. Sometimes the food delivers. Other times, I reach the front and wonder what convinced everyone to wait so long.
But I have noticed something equally interesting.
Every now and then, an almost empty stall catches my attention.
It is usually the stall I would have walked past without thinking. Then I notice the uncle behind the counter working quietly, the food displayed neatly, or one regular sitting at the side eating with complete confidence. Suddenly, I want to know why nobody else is there.
A queue gives me an answer before I have tasted anything. An empty stall gives me a question.
I experienced this recently while deciding where to eat in a busy neighbourhood. One stall had a line stretching several people deep. Another nearby had almost nobody waiting. I initially leaned towards the crowded one, but kept glancing back at the other stall.
Eventually, curiosity won.
The meal was good, but what stayed with me was the thought that both stalls had managed to attract me for completely different reasons. One had the reassurance of numbers. The other had the mystery of being overlooked.
Both instincts can exist at the same food centre, sometimes only a few steps apart. One tells us, “Everyone else is eating here.” The other quietly asks, “But what if everyone else is missing something?”
I think I will continue following both.
Sometimes the queue tells me where to eat. Other times, the empty stall gives me somewhere to begin looking.
And perhaps that is what makes wandering through Singapore’s food places so interesting. You never quite know whether the next meal will be found by following everyone else or by looking in the opposite direction.
There are plenty more places that invite that kind of curiosity here, where sometimes the most interesting discovery is the one you were not expecting to make.
