Ex-Star Search Contestant Now A Hawker Selling Shiok Bak Chor Mee
He’s well-known for two things these days: his cowboy hat and altruism.
Some hawkers serve great food but - due to a lack of marketing flair - remain obscure. Not Terance Tham, though. He’s one of the rare few who knows exactly how to put himself out there.
In the Siglap kopitiam where he runs his new stall Grandfather Bak Chor Mee, his towering height already grabs attention. He tops off his stature with his signature leather cowboy hat, which is colour-coordinated according to the days of the week. “Red is for Saturdays, ’cos I’m happy I can see my grandchildren,” he tells 8days.sg.
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Grandfather of five
At 53, Terance is already a grandfather-of-five (he has three grown-up kids). His grandchildren’s names are lovingly tattooed on his forearm. Leather boots, faded jeans and Patrick Tse-esque wraparound shades complete his hard-boiled John Wayne meets cowboy country singer look. His voice is gravelly from years of smoking.
He doesn’t work for money
He avers that he’s not a “rich man”, but he doesn’t work for money anymore. “Now that I’m a grandfather, I no longer chiong, chiong, chiong. I run a hawker stall out of interest, and to help people. As long as I don’t lose money and I can pay my employees and rent, I’ll continue,” says Terance, who also owns the famous three-year-old Grandfather Carrot Cake stall (pictured) - named after his 'ah gong' status - across the road at coffeeshop Soy Eu Tua.
Nasi padang stall opening clashed with Phase 2 (HA)
He opened a nasi padang stall on May 1 this year, right beside his equally new bak chor mee joint. Grandfather Nasi Padang is now temporarily closed due to the no dine-in rule for Phase 2 (Heightened Alert). “It’s a waste of food to serve nasi padang, ’cos there’s no crowd,” he shares.
Man with a thousand lives
Terance’s spirit of charity, he says, is rooted in his past personal turmoil. The son of a laksa hawker “at Tanglin Halt Chap Lak Lau”, he had dabbled in many fields. At 17, he joined modelling agency Carrie Models (“the batch before Zoe Tay, Chuando and Tay Ping Hui,” he says). A keen singer, he (pictured above in a suit) also took part in Star Search alongside Chew Chor Meng and Angela Ang in the '90s, and reached the semi-finals before dropping out to attend to personal matters.
He had been running an interior design firm, which was hit hard by the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Terance took a bank loan to pay his employees and suppliers, though he ended up declaring himself bankrupt. “I almost jumped down from a building,” he recalls. “I sold my business and my company and personal cars to pay off my six-figure debts.”
Times were so hard, he smoked cast-off cigs
The erstwhile towkay then fell on very hard times. To make ends meet, he started working as a hawker’s assistant and also washed cars for $10 a pop. “I picked up the half-smoked cigarettes that taxi drivers threw away to smoke, because I couldn’t afford a pack,” he recounts.
It’s a part of his life that he’s reluctant to reveal, but Terence is now opening up for a reason. “I want to tell young people, never give up. As long as you’re willing to work and don’t indulge in vices, there’s nothing you cannot overcome,” he says.
He eventually got himself discharged from bankruptcy, and went on to open more (now defunct) F&B businesses, like a fish soup stall, char kway teow stall and a pub called Red Comrades at Dunlop Street, which is where he started wearing his campy cowboy hats.
His bak chor mee
He came up with his own bak chor mee recipe, which comes with - unusually enough - prawns and herh keow. “Need to attract a younger crowd. They like prawns. But cannot overshot [with the modernised frills] lah,” he says sagely.
His Bak Chor Mee comes in your choice of dry or soup, and in three sizes at $4.50/ $5.50/ $6.50. The basic $4.50 bowl comes with ingredients like a frozen prawn, meatballs, herh keow, plus lean and minced pork all topped with a heap of house-made flounder fish powder and crunchy lard. The $5.50 and $6.50 bowls are upsized, with an additional fresh big prawn. You can choose from four types of noodles, like mee pok, mee kia, mee tai mak and kway teow noodles.
Spicy Mee Tai Mak 'Kodo-Style', $5.50 (8 DAYS Pick!)
While you can order mee tai mak for your bak chor mee, this soupy pick is an off-menu item. Just tell Terance that you want the 'Kodo-style' spicy mee tai mak soup, which comes with his requisite BCM ingredients in a sambal chilli and vinegar-spiked pork bone broth and crunchy bean sprouts (from Terance’s flamboyant appearance, you can tell that the man doesn’t hold back in his cooking too). “It’s like the Chinese hot and sour soup,” he explains. Delish.
Terance is also open to mentoring young people who want to join the hawker trade. “I’m willing to teach for free,” he chortles. “Just buy me a bottle of beer!”
Grandfather Bak Chor Mee, 936 East Coast Rd, S459129. Open daily except alternate Mondays, 6am-8pm (no delivery service). www.facebook.com/ECoastRd.
Photos: Lionel Lai/ Terence Tham
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