Friday, October 19, 2007



whitley flyover food centre



in the 70s, whitley flyover food centre was one of two our favourite haunts, the other being newton food centre. the proximity of the centre to our workplace was one of the main factors that we regularly gathered at whitley after work or after our riding (on our motorcycles) sessions.

it was a compact food centre tucked under the flyover. there was ample parking space at the car-park next to it, which is still around today. in those days, we either walked or rode our motorcycles to the makan place.

one of my favourite food stalls was the pork porridge macaroni. i liked the gluey porridge that came piping hot. i think this stall, together with the pepper crab stall - tian jin hai - relocated to macpherson's jackson place when whitley flyover food centre was shut down.

i can also remember the fishball noodles stall because the owner was my neighbour in kampong chia heng. today, he and his younger brother are still in the same business. i see him when i go to lavender food court.

i was not particularly fond of the big prawn noodles which is now operating at the novena food court. my reason for not patronising the stall must be that the price was high (for me, at that time) and the other reason was big prawns did not appeal to me. but, it seems there were more than one big prawn noodles which operated at whitley. the other day when i went to the newly renovated old airport food court, i came across another 'whitley road big prawn noodles' stall.

another stall that made its name there was the golden rooster. but, our favourite stall was the mamak drink stall. we could sit there the whole evening and down, between the two of us (kok weng and i), ten glasses of teh.

1 comment:

Lam Chun See said...

I often come to this place too. Once a week after work, my colleagues and I go for jog at MacRitchie and then we would adjourn either to this place or the one at Lakeview (Thomson). We used to joke that we put back double the amount of calories we burned in our jog.

That would be late 70's and early 80's when I worked at Philips in Toa Payoh.