The Last Bowls at Jalan Berseh

The Last Bowls at Jalan Berseh

The wet market at Jalan Berseh doesn’t announce itself. It sits under a concrete block near the intersection with Kelantan Road, unremarkable from the outside except for the produce crates stacked unevenly along the footpath and the occasional bucket of live fish breathing through a thin layer of water. On a Tuesday morning in late July, the corridor smells like ginger and damp cardboard and something metallic from the drains.

Inside, the stalls are arranged in the usual Singaporean wet-market geometry—parallel rows, fluorescent lighting, a floor that stays wet no matter how many times someone mops. But at the back-left corner, past the vegetable vendor who sells only morning glory and long beans, there’s a laksa stall that has been operating since 1981. A hand-painted sign above the counter reads “Sungei Road Laksa” in Chinese characters, with a smaller English transliteration beneath it that looks like it was added as an afterthought.

The stall is run by Mr. Ong, who is seventy-three and does not own a phone. The younger woman working the other wok is his niece, Mei Ling, who started helping on weekends twelve years ago and never quite left. “He taught her,” says a regular customer, a retiree named Mr. Tan who lives three blocks away and eats here twice a week. “But not everything. Some things you cannot learn.”

Six Bowls an Hour, More or Less

The laksa here is not the laksa most visitors to Singapore know. It’s the old Peranakan style, from the Katong tradition but older than that—thicker coconut gravy, fewer noodles, a broth that has been simmering since before the stall opened for the day. Mr. Ong ladles it into small bowls, about the size of a rice bowl, which is the traditional serving vessel. The spoon is ceramic, not plastic. The laksa leaves are shredded by hand, not chopped with a knife.

“People ask why we don’t use a bigger bowl,” says Mei Ling, pausing between orders. “They want a large. But the taste changes if you use a big bowl. The ratio is wrong.”

The stall produces roughly six bowls every ten minutes during the lunch rush, though the math doesn’t hold when the queue stretches past the vegetable vendor. On a good Saturday, they’ll go through fifty kilograms of thick bee hoon. The gravy is measured by eye, not weight—Mr. Ong’s hand knows the scoop, the tilt, the exact moment to stop pouring.

There’s no menu. There’s no price list. Regulars know it’s five dollars a bowl, cash only, exact change appreciated but not enforced. When a tourist asks for a menu, Mei Ling points at the bowls on the counter and says, “Laksa. Only laksa.”

The Notice That Changed Everything

In March, the Singapore Food Agency posted a notice on the market’s public announcement board. The Jalan Berseh wet market, along with three others in the Rochor area, had been slated for redevelopment as part of a larger plan to convert older markets into centralized hawker centres. The timeline was vague—”phased transition over 18 to 24 months”—but the effect was immediate.

Mr. Ong received the news through a neighbour who read it aloud from the notice board. He does not read English. “He asked me what it meant,” says Mei Ling. “I told him it means we have to move. He didn’t say anything for a long time.”

The new hawker centre, planned for a site half a kilometre away, will have proper ventilation, a central dishwashing system, and a standardized stall layout. It will also require all vendors to operate under a single management contract, with set operating hours, a standard menu board, and a centralized payment system. “They want us to join the tray return programme,” Mei Ling says, with a tone that suggests this is not a selling point.

For a stall that has survived forty-three years without a menu board, the transition is less about logistics than about something harder to name. The hand-painted sign. The ceramic spoons that Mr. Ong buys from a supplier in Johor who retired in 2019 but still takes his calls. The exact height of the counter, which he built himself in 1985 and which has worn a groove into the concrete floor where he stands.

The Problems That Don’t Show Up on Reports

The debate about wet markets versus hawker centres in Singapore is older than most of the stalls. The government has been consolidating hawker culture since the 1970s, moving street vendors into centralized facilities for hygiene and efficiency. On paper, the results are hard to argue with—Singapore’s hawker centres are among the cleanest and safest food environments in Southeast Asia. But the conversion comes with side effects that don’t show up on inspection reports.

“The problem is not the hygiene,” says Mr. Tan, the regular customer. “The problem is the character. When you make everything the same, you lose the things that make each stall different.”

At the Jalan Berseh market, the laksa gravy is made on a stove that Mr. Ong bought second-hand in 1993. It has been repaired at least seven times, most recently with a piece of wire coat hanger holding the temperature dial in place. The broth simmers for six hours minimum, and on days when Mr. Ong arrives late, the gravy is not the same—thinner, less integrated, the way a stew tastes when it hasn’t had enough time.

“You can taste when he’s tired,” says a fishmonger, her stall two rows over. “On those days, I tell customers to come back tomorrow.”

In the new hawker centre, the stove will be electric. The temperature will be controlled by a digital thermostat. The broth will reach a rolling boil in half the time. But the gravy will not taste the same—not because the ingredients change, but because the thing that makes the gravy work is the accumulation of small, unrepeatable conditions: a specific stove, a specific hand, a specific fatigue.

The Queue on a Friday Afternoon

By 1:30 PM on a Friday, the queue has grown to fourteen people—a mix of office workers from nearby Rochor, retirees, and three young women who came on a recommendation from a food blog. One of the women is filming on her phone, which Mei Ling notices and does not comment on. Mr. Ong does not look up from his wok.

“Is this the famous one?” one of the women asks her friend, loud enough for the queue to hear. Her friend nods. “Yeah, before it closes down.”

The phrase hangs in the air. A man in a blue polo shirt, who appears to be in his fifties, turns around. “It’s not closed yet,” he says flatly. “You can just eat.”

The woman puts her phone away.

The queue moves slowly, not because the stall is inefficient but because Mr. Ong does not speed up for queues. The laksa takes as long as it takes. Mei Ling moves between the counter and the condiment station, restocking sambal and laksa leaves, occasionally answering a question about what is in the broth. “Coconut milk, fish, spices,” she says, which is true and not the whole truth.

“He won’t tell anyone the full recipe,” she says later, when the queue has thinned. “He says if I write it down, it belongs to the government. So I have to learn it by watching.”

She has been watching for twelve years. She has the recipe roughly right, she thinks, but the exact proportions—the precise pinch of belacan, the order in which the rempah goes into the wok—she is still trying to catch. “He doesn’t measure. He just knows. When I try to copy, it’s not the same.”

The Gravy Stays in the Wok

The redevelopment timeline keeps shifting. Originally scheduled for demolition in early 2025, the market is now expected to stay open until at least mid-2026, pending negotiations between the hawkers’ association and the Singapore Food Agency. “They keep pushing it back,” says Mei Ling. “I think they want us to leave on our own, so nobody can complain about bad press.”

Whether the laksa stall will reopen in the new hawker centre is uncertain. Mr. Ong has told his niece that he will not apply for a new stall. The application process requires forms in English, a business registration number, and a proposal for operating hours and menu pricing. “He said, ‘I’m not starting over. I’m finishing,'” Mei Ling recalls. She paused. “I don’t know if that means I’m finishing too. I haven’t asked.”

On a humid afternoon in late August, a customer from out of town orders six bowls to take away—he’s driving back to Johor Bahru later, he explains, and his mother-in-law used to come here in the 1990s. Mr. Ong packs the gravy separately in small plastic bags, tied with rubber bands, the way he has done for decades. The customer pays cash, thirty dollars, and leaves.

Mei Ling watches him go. “Everyone wants the last bowl now,” she says. “But the last bowl is the same as the first bowl. Nothing changes except people pay attention.”

The gravy simmers. The queue shortens. The afternoon light through the grimy windows changes from white to yellow, and somewhere nearby, the concrete of Jalan Berseh is already cracking under the weight of the plans that will replace it.