Well-Loved Cai Png Stall Lan Xing Delight At Redhill Food Centre Closed Permanently

Many fans reminisced about Lan Xing Delights’ popularity online. “Your regular customers will miss your mum’s cheap and nice mixed vegetable rice. The longest queue every day in the whole hawker centre. In fact, the queue starts even before opening for business,” said one netizen.

Another agreed, lamenting, “Love her mixed rice. Usually very long queue with many elderly folks sitting around her stall before she even opens the stall.”

Speaking to us in Mandarin over the phone, Joo Mai explains that her stall was popular due to its budget-friendly prices. “Two vegetable dishes and one meat for $2.50. It’s very hard to find this kind of price nowadays. And there’s free soup for every order,” she tells us. “They always tell me that the food I cook has that old-school taste like how their mums used to cook.” Some dishes she used to sell include classic cai png fare like braised pork, tofu and mixed veggies.

Her decision to close has nothing to do with rising prices – instead, she feels that it’s the right time to retire. “Old already,” she explains simply.

However, the hawker found it difficult to break the news to her devoted fans. “I couldn’t bear to tell my customers that I was closing [shop]. I was scared that they would all scold me,” she shares with a laugh. “After the [FB] post went up, two or three of them actually called me up to scold me. I shouldn’t have given them my phone number,” she adds half-jokingly.

She also wanted to avoid facing a sudden influx of customers: “If I had told them earlier, the queue would’ve been very, very long. Then it would’ve been too tiring for me to handle.”

Still, to her longtime customers, she says, “I’m very grateful for their support all these years. Both old and young customers, even those who moved to faraway places like Woodlands, still came back to eat my food. I want to thank them for always coming back and supporting us.”

The hawker (right) has her retirement plan all figured out: “Relak a while, rest a while. I’ll find my old friends to chit-chat and drink tea with,” she chuckles.

And while the second-generation hawker herself took over the running of Lan Xing Delight from her mum years ago, she has no plans to hand over the reins to her three children. “Being a hawker is very, very hard. I have to wake up at 3am to go to the market, and work until 8pm. How can my kids do it? I don’t want them to do it lah,” she says.

Daisy (left in pic), currently employed as assistant manager in research administration, says, “I did consider [being a hawker] before – the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And my mum’s not supportive too – she told me: ‘Then I let you study for what?’ (laughs).”

Photos: Daisy Lee

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