Quite a bit of a hoo-ha has been raised over a STOMP article that purports to review the closing of a yong tau foo stall in Toa Payoh. The piece, published on Christmas Eve of all days, took aim at Hup Chong Yong Tau Foo, a family-run stall that has been serving the neighbourhood for over four decades.

After reading the article myself, I feel the need to toss in my dua sen.

And I am annoyed enough to want to spend those two cents.

For context: the stall had already announced it would be closing in January 2026. The owners cited rising costs, declining footfall since the pandemic, and the strain of working fifteen-hour days. They were preparing for a quiet exit after forty years of feeding the community. Then the article dropped, and Christmas became, in the family’s own words, “the worst Christmas ever in our life.”

Let me be clear about what I am not criticising. The problem is not that the writer disliked the food or felt the meal was not worth the money. These are subjective matters for which there is no universally correct answer. Your favourite food may be my least favourite food, and both viewpoints may be equally valid. I am all for honesty in food reviews. If you think something tastes bad, say so. If you think the price does not match the quality, that is a fair opinion to hold.

The problem is the tone and the logic.

The Contemptuous Tone

First, the tone is contemptuous. The stall is not described neutrally; it is written in a dismissive manner that seems designed to belittle rather than inform and educate.

“Ultra-processed food infused with cheese.”

“Hotdogs I can find in my fridge.”

“Vegetables you can get cheap at the supermarket.”

“Fried food soaked in oil.”

This is not consumer advocacy. Am I supposed to read all that and think “wow, great objective review”? The language drips with disdain, the kind of snark that plays well for engagement metrics but offers little in the way of genuine insight. There is a difference between honest criticism and gratuitous condescension. This article leans heavily toward the latter.

It is worth noting that the article was published on Christmas Eve, targeting a stall that was already on its way out. The family that runs Hup Chong includes an 80-year-old mother who was, according to reports, “shocked and deeply saddened” when she learnt about the piece. There is something particularly unkind about piling on a business that is already down, already struggling, already preparing to close its doors for the last time.

The Clickbait Logic

Second, the logic is clickbait logic: one bill shock story presented as the whole explanation for why a business is closing. We are told the meal costs $9.20 and that a “variety” of ingredients were taken. The headline practically screams: this is exactly why they are closing down.

Okay, $9.20 does sound like a lot at first thought. But looking at the pictures supplied in the article, I count ten, probably eleven ingredients (noodles included) that the writer had selected. That is less than $1 per ingredient, which is pretty average price for a YTF stall. The stall had also given a discount and thrown in free bean sprouts. The final bill was actually lower than it should have been.

The stall was also transparent about their pricing. Anyone who knows mental arithmetic can at least do a ballpark estimate of how much to pay at the end. If you have ten ingredients, each one costing just under a dollar, that is about nine dollars and a few coins. Is that too difficult to mentally work out? The prices were displayed. The writer chose eleven items. The maths is not complicated.

For comparison, other YTF stalls in Toa Payoh charge similar prices. At $0.80 per item, Hup Chong was not some egregious outlier gouging unsuspecting customers. They had only raised prices by twenty cents over the past ten years, according to the family. If anything, that shows remarkable restraint in an era of rising food costs, rental increases, and labour pressures.

The Lazy Moral Verdict

Finally, turning a closure into a moral judgement is lazy. “Adapt or die out” makes for a punchline, not a fair assessment. The article suggested the owners “utterly lack self-reflection,” as if a forty-year-old family business had simply been too stubborn or dim to figure out how the modern food scene works.

Closures happen for all sorts of reasons: footfall changes, long hours, staffing shortages, cost pressures, competition, health, family commitments, you name it. More than 3,000 F&B businesses have shut down in Singapore in the past year alone, averaging roughly 250 closures per month. That is the highest rate in nearly two decades. Many hawkers face the same pressures. Not all of them can simply “adapt” their way out of structural challenges in the industry.

If you want to argue that pricing or menu choices contributed to a stall’s decline, then do the work. Show comparisons with similar stalls in the area. Show the costs in terms of rental, raw ingredient costs, and other overheads. Speak to the stall owner properly and ask for their comments. Understand that hawkers typically spend about seventy cents for every dollar they earn, according to food critic KF Seetoh.

Many have no fixed salary; they take home whatever remains in the till at the end of the day.

Do not skip straight to a verdict and call it insight.

The Bigger Issue

We can talk about whether hawker food should be value for money. We can talk about hawker food evolving. We can even disagree about whether nostalgia is deserved if some stalls close down. These are legitimate conversations worth having, and reasonable people can hold different views.

But if our public conversation about small businesses is going to be shaped by snarky “exactly why it’s closing” headlines, then we are not doing anyone any favours. Certainly not the readers, who deserve more rigorous analysis. Certainly not the hawkers, who deserve more empathy as they navigate an increasingly difficult environment. And certainly not the broader food culture, which deserves better than drive-by hot takes dressed up as journalism.

The delivery matters. The tone matters. As food writer Seth Lui puts it:  ‘I’m all for honesty, but the delivery is everything — the specific tone and language used in an article or video can make or break a business.’

When that business belongs to a family that has spent four decades serving a community, perhaps some measure of grace is warranted.