Ah, young sweet naive child I am. How did I live 23 years in this tiny island without having eaten Orh Luak (Oyster Omelette) before?
It happens.
My first introduction to this dish then is very fortunately in the safe hands of the uncle from Xing Li Cooked Food. Hands which a queue of patrons patiently wait an hour and more for.
This stall is manned by a solitary uncle. Everything from the preparation of the plates, the batter, the payment, the cooking, everything is done by him. He may be aged, but he was still sprightly, deft in his movements. Every plate here is cooked with his unwavering dedication and patience.
In the one hour I spent queuing, I had some extra time to ponder about... the future of food in general. Will anyone be around to cook this for my children in 20 years? What would it cost for us to sustain hawker food as a viable livelihood for future generations?
There are, as I learnt on this trip, two kinds of oyster omelette. One is Orh Luak or Orh Jian where the egg mixture has some flour like rice flour or potato flour added to it, and Orh Neng where it's just egg. This is research done later because I was curious on the difference between the two items the uncle was cooking, "Fried Oyster" and "Oyster Egg". Guess which is which. :) So without knowing what we were doing exactly, we ordered the Orh Luak.
Why have I not been introduced to you earlier, beautiful oyster omelette? Oh yeah, because of the oysters.
As a non-fan of oysters, this plate of Orh Luak took me to heaven. A fluffy egg cloud of heaven. Lightly crisp on the outside, but so soft and airy on the inside. The addition of flour makes the egg slightly chewy, but without being tough. And the sweet chilli sauce adds another dimension to this dish (which I am unfortunately still training my taste buds for as a non-fan of spicy food).
Hidden inside the cloud of egg are plentiful oysters, each one succulent and juicy. I am not an oyster connoisseur but I can tell, if you are a bigger fan of oysters than me, this plate of oyster omelette will hit you deeper in your oral cavity than mine. The oysters burst in your mouth, full of the juices of the sea. Even without eating the oysters, the egg cloud carries a slight taste of oysters, the fragrance of the sea if you will. It's not explicitly oyster-y or seawater-y, but it tastes subtly like the ocean, like the waves lapping at your toes at the edge of the beach.
Value
I normally talk about the value of the food in juxtaposition to its price point. And I often look at value as merely its taste, sometimes the ambience, the cost of manpower, the extra novelty gimmicks. But rarely has the f&b industry prompted me to study the value of food in terms of its heritage, its sentimental value.
This plate of Orh Luak ("Fried Oyster") cost $4. $4 is a great price for what it was, how delicious it was, how perfect it was, how much soul it had.
A plate of Orh Neng ("Oyster Egg") starts from $6, which is a completely fair price for the amount of ingredients and work that go into a plate of Orh Neng.
But what is the value of Singapore's food heritage? Am I willing to pay more than that for the taste of my childhood and the taste of my home?
If paying more means that my children and my grandchildren continue to have the the opportunity to experience our hawker food and heritage, then this plate of oyster omelette is dirt cheap. It's dirt cheap at the cost of the survival of this dish.
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| The queue had dissipated at the end of the day, but Uncle still mans his stall resolutely |
Xing Li Cooked Food
Old Airport Road Food Centre, #01-28
51 Old Airport Road, Singapore 390051
Nearest MRT: Dakota, Mountbatten, Kallang
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