Sarah Teh
It’s past eight, and the lingering heat warms the pavement. A grill flares beneath bare bulbs, smoke rising as a vendor fans the coals. Satay skewers sizzle, coins exchange hands, and the queue shifts, a fleeting moment in the vibrant night market in Singapore. Most visitors miss this dynamic scene. They arrive ready to photograph…
The steam came up in one thin ribbon, and I almost missed it. It was near eleven at Bedok 85, and I had been standing at Xing Ji Rou Cuo Mian for a while, watching more than shooting. The uncle worked the noodles in a wire basket, dunking them into the boiling water, lifting, shaking…
The malls close first. Restaurants dim their lights behind glass, chairs are stacked, and the daytime shopping crowds begin to leave Orchard Road. Somerset, which spends most of the day moving between lunch queues and retail floors, quietly becomes something else. I walk the streets around Somerset MRT Station with a camera after dark: down…
It was past ten when I got to Bedok 85, and the steam was doing all the talking. Fong Seng was long shut by then, but the hawker centre still hummed. A few tables of men in singlets nursing beers. The clack of a wok somewhere behind me. And that particular fluorescent glare that flattens…
6ix 6ix After Midnight Cuppage Road goes quiet after the dinner crowds thin out. The shophouses along Cuppage Terrace dim, Cuppage Plaza rescinds into darkness, and the street holds only the low hum of a few late cars and the occasional figure walking home. Then there is 6ix 6ix, spilling warm light onto the pavement…
The wok never stopped roaring. It was almost midnight at a zi char stall in Geylang, and the flames kept leaping up in short, angry bursts. Trays clattered. Someone shouted an order across the aisle. A cleaner dragged a bin past my chair. I sat there with my camera in my lap, waiting for a…
The first time I tried to photograph nigiri at a proper counter, I ruined the piece. I fussed. I tilted the plate. I leaned back for a better angle, checked the screen, tried again. By the time I actually ate it, the rice had cooled and the fish had warmed, and that careful balance the…
The smoke reached me before the food did. It was close to one in the morning, and I was standing at a satay stall near Lau Pa Sat, watching a man fan his coals in slow, practiced strokes. Each pass sent up a curl of grey that caught the streetlight and vanished. I had my…
I nearly walked into Cuppage Plaza by mistake. That’s the thing people get wrong about Al Capone’s. It’s not inside the plaza at all. It sits a short walk away at 37 Cuppage Terrace, along that covered open-air stretch where the tables spill almost onto the walkway. I found it by following the sound first.…
The first time I lowered my camera mid-shot, I knew something had changed in me. It was past midnight at Geylang Lor 9 Fresh Frog Porridge, a kway chap stall nearby still going strong. The uncle had just ladled broth over the rice, the steam curling up into the dim light, and instead of framing…