I used to have my regular fish porridge fix at this stall at the Toa Payoh, Lorong 8, Food Centre.  But the day I saw the stall owner using dirty bowls to serve the customers I stopped patronizing the stall altogether.

Singaporeans love their food.  We are known to go the extra mile just to eat at our favourite restaurant or hawker stall.  Once, a group of my colleagues hopped into a car and drove half the length of the island just to have hakka yong taufu at a coffee-shop in Upper Thomson Road for lunch.

When I first moved into Toa Payoh I made it a point to try as many stalls as possible in the Food Centers in Lorong 8, 7 & 5.  I have never been a lover of fish porridge, but one evening I went for fish porridge at this stall at the Lorong 8 Food Centre for a change.  As it turned out, I liked the porridge so much that for more than a year after that, fish porridge (at that particular stall, I should add) had become a meal of choice for me.

Then one evening while standing in the queue, I saw the stall owner dishing out the orders into bowls she took from the unwashed bin at the back of the dingy stall.  That was enough to cure my “addiction” for this fish porridge.

I did not go round slandering this stall to every stranger I met, but I did make it a point to relate the story to my relatives and friends, especially those staying in the Toa Payoh Lorong 8 area.

As consumers, we should make it a point to reward good stalls and penalize bad stalls.  That way we will retain our good stalls.  The bad ones will feel the pinch and have to close shop.