Japanese hawker fare with restaurant flair

More stalls in coffee shops and hawker centres are serving restaurant-quality dishes such as sashimi and donburi under $20

- Hedy Khoo

At Ten Ten Otoko, a Japanese food stall tucked inside a coffee shop in Lavender, stall owner David Wong deftly slices slabs of sashimi-grade salmon. He pats them on ice, garnishing them with lemon slices to counter the heat of the setting with no air-conditioning.

The price? Ten dollars for five hefty slices.

The 39-year-old, who opened the stall in August 2024, started out serving raw fish and sushi at a coffee-shop stall at Punggol's Edgefield Plains, which he ran from January 2022 until he moved out in December 2023, to a larger space.

His motivation is to deliver well-priced Japanese fare, served with the flair and discipline of a restaurant kitchen, that regulars are able to afford more than once a week.

More hawkers are following a similar playbook, raising the bar for Japanese cuisine in neighbourhood coffee shops and hawker centres.