It took one bite into the massive fried chicken leg from Jonas Koh’s food stall to know that he is doing it right.
The leg — the biggest I’ve ever seen in my years of eating Singapore’s hawker fare — was crispy on the outside, juicy and tender on the inside, and coated in spices without being overpowering. The onion and chili sambal paste on the side, Koh’s pride and joy, added spice and sweetness to the dish.
“Our chili is what separates us from the rest,” Koh, 30, said to me when I visited the stall in November. “We get a lot of customers who come back and literally just buy chili from us.”
Koh started The Kumpong Boys in September 2024, a hawker stall in Singapore’s northern Ang Mo Kio neighborhood. He specializes in nasi lemak, a dish originating in Malaysia that consists of fragrant rice, sambal, fried chicken, an egg, anchovies, and cucumbers.
Although he appeased his parents by earning a business degree in college, Koh always dreamed of starting his own eatery. He cut his teeth in the food and beverage industry from the age of 17, working as a waiter, then in kitchens and bars.
While he’s happy to be his own boss, Koh said he has one big regret: setting up shop in a neighborhood populated with older people who pinch pennies.
Opening and running The Kumpong Boys
Koh started the stall with the help of a mentor he met while working at OverEasy, an American diner in Singapore. They perfected the nasi lemak recipe together.
He then spent about 7,000 Singapore dollars, or about $5,400, from his savings to buy cooking equipment and set up the stall.
Now, he arrives at the stall at 9 a.m. and prepares rice, eggs, and chicken curry with his lone staff member before the store opens at 10 a.m.
He closes the store at 8 p.m. after feeding the dinner crowd, a routine he repeats seven days a week.
The long hours and heat of the hawker center have grown on him.
“I’ve never worked in a corporate job — the 9-5 grind, getting reprimanded by your boss,” he said. “My friends ask me if being a hawker is tiring, but I think passion for the work is what keeps me going.”
Young customers are a rare sight in this neighborhood
But there is one problem — and it’s a big one.
Koh’s primary consideration when choosing the location of his stall was rent. In Ang Mo Kio’s sleepy residential neighborhood, he found a stall with a monthly rental of SG$3,700, including gas, electricity, and water.
After he opened the stall, he quickly realized that there was a problem. The neighborhood was filled with older residents with a tight grip on their purse strings.
“I really regret choosing this location, because customers are really not open-minded about price,” he said. “Most of the people here want meals under SG$4.”
His signature dishes, the berempah set and the curry ayam set, cost SG$6.90, which he said was the lowest price he could offer with the rising cost of ingredients.
Koh’s stall is also surrounded by other hawker stalls that sell cheaper products, making him feel like he’s being priced out of the market. He sells about 80 to 100 plates on a good day, and 30 to 40 on a bad day.
He said the older people in the neighborhood also tend to abide by more religious practices that affect his sales.
“A lot of older Buddhist people eat vegetarian food on the first and the 15th day of the month,” he said. “On those days, I’ll see a drastic drop in plates sold.”
Another time, he said, a Buddhist temple near his stall offered free vegetarian food for 10 days, which hit sales.
“This makes me feel like the target customer I’m looking for is not here,” he said. “There’s a lot more potential, and a lot more things we can do, but we must step out from here and go elsewhere.”
He said he is looking to move to regions with a younger, more affluent crowd, like near universities or the central business district, to boost his sales.
“When I read news articles about eateries shutting down, part of me is afraid that one day I will be there in the paper, the one that’s going to close down,” he said.
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