After more than 10 months, the wait is finally over. The much awaited opening of the market and food centre (FC) at Blk 724, Ang Mo Kio Central, has been soft launched since today, or rather, the food centre portion of it has been soft launched by some hardworking stall owners.
Since Tuesday, the barricades guarding the borders of the entire market/FC has been removed and we could see some contractors and stall owners busy renovating or trying to set up their stall operations in anticipating of its opening.
This morning, when my mom reached my place, she was telling me that a few of the hawker stalls have opened for business and there is a small crowd already eating and ordering from these newly opened stalls. Yippee! Thankfully, I had the foresight to tell my mom the night before not to buy me any lunch. Your truly is going to zip downstairs and join the little crowd to welcome back the previous hawkers for their 10 months of absence.
I guess everybody living around AMK Central must have had the same sentiment, cos it was more than just a little crowd that was gathered there. There were office workers, students and residents, all gathering and sitting down to enjoy the hawker fares.
Walking around all the stalls that were opening or in the midst of opening, I could see a number of our favourite stalls were thankfully in operation. There's the wontan noodles that Louis and I both like, congee, fried kway teow with cockles, mince meat and mushroom noodles, teochew fish porridge, Malay stall (great satays!), fried carrot cake (the white ones, not the black), western food, satay bee hoon, duck noodles/rice, yong tau foo, hot/cold dessert stalls, fried hokkien noodles. SLURP!
After much debating, I decided throw caution to the wind and have myself a plate of fried kway teow with cockles. Yummy! The fried kway teow was fried to the right degree of "wetness" with a generous serving of cockles. I was feeling only partially full after that and decided to indulge in yet another plate of sinful fried food. This time around, it was the fried carrot cake. Decide to pack that home to eat instead. But I could only finish half. Nevermind...Louis can finish the remainder tonight when he's back ;)
For dinner, Louis and I decided to head downstairs to eat while my mom fed Faith her porridge. I headed back to the Blk 729 FC for the 2nd time that day, while Louis has his first look around at all the stalls that have been set up. He settled for the satay bee hoon while I had my congee with dough fritters, to make up for my afternoon indulgence, although its hard to say it with a straight face that the congee is healthy on account of the fried fritter.
Am so glad that the FC is now open for business. Unfortunately, there are a few stalls that I haven't seen and am wondering if they had decided to relocate elsewhere on account of the 10-month long wait while the FC was being renovated. There used to be a vegetarian stall, which my mom said their red/brown rice porridge was nice. It would have been great if the vegetarian stall reopened so that there would be more variety for my mom. The other stall that I miss is the Indian stall, selling Indian rojak and mee goreng.
Well, there are still a few stalls that are still empty or whom, stall owners may seem to be taking their time to reopen. Let's hope the above 2 would be in that category of stall owners.
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