Two Bowls After Dark: Photographing Xing Ji and Seng Hiang at Bedok 85

August 20, 2026-Sarah Teh-Last Updated August 20, 2026
Xing Ji and Seng Hiang exterior areas at Bedok 85 Market during night.

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 everything it touches, spilling white and cold over plastic chairs and metal counters.

I came for two bowls. I stayed for the light.

At Xing Ji Wanton Mee, the bak chor mee comes out fast. The uncle worked without looking up, blanching the noodles in a wire basket, shaking off the water in three sharp flicks. Then the vinegar. Then the chilli. His hands knew the order without thinking.

I had maybe a few seconds before the steam thinned out, so I framed low and close, letting the fluorescent tube behind him catch the sheen on the noodles.

That was the hardest part. The gravy on bak chor mee is dark and reflective, and overhead lighting turns it into a mirror. Tilt the bowl the wrong way and you get a bright white circle where the sauce should be.

So I moved. I crouched, shifted left, waited for the reflection to slide off the edge of the frame. What I wanted was texture, not shine. The minced pork, the char of the ti poh, the way the chilli pooled red at the bottom.

I got one frame I liked. The noodles still lifting a thin ribbon of steam, the vinegar catching light like glass.

Then I ate, because that is the deal. You do not let a bowl go cold for a photograph.

Seng Hiang was quieter. The porridge stall sat further in, and the light there was warmer, an older tube gone slightly yellow with age. The auntie ladled congee into a bowl, slow and steady, the rice broken down to something soft and pale. She cracked a raw egg over the top and let it slide in.

No flourish. Just the motion of someone who had done it ten thousand times.

Porridge is a difficult thing to photograph. It has no obvious shape. It sits in the bowl like a quiet grey lake, and if you are not careful it reads as nothing at all.

So I looked for the small things. The gloss of the egg yolk sinking in. A scatter of spring onion. The steam, again, always the steam, rising in a thin line under the yellow light.

I shot it from just above, close enough to lose the edge of the bowl. The warmth of that older tube did something the white light at Xing Ji could not. It made the congee feel like comfort. Like something you eat when you are tired, or unwell, or just want to be looked after for a while.

Between the two stalls, the light told two different stories. Cold and sharp at one. Soft and worn at the other. Same hawker centre, same hour, two entirely different moods sitting fifty steps apart.

That is the thing about shooting food at night here. You do not control the light. You find it. You work around the queue, the shared tables, the uncle who wants his counter back. You take what the room gives you and you make it mean something.

I left with both bowls emptied and a handful of frames I was not sure about. That happens more often than not. The best ones rarely announce themselves at the counter.

But I keep thinking about the auntie at Seng Hiang, cracking that egg without a word. How the yolk caught the light for a second before it disappeared into the rice.

Some moments you photograph. Some you just carry home.

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