Malaysia
Singapore
Thailand
Sometimes, we follow our parents’ example and end up in the same line of work as them. This looks to be the case for sisters Linda and Emma who opened GRIDDLE at Bedok Food Centre on October 20.
Linda and Emma’s parents were hawkers back in the early ’80s. They sold prata at Bedok and Upper Changi Road and both daughters would help out during school holidays and on weekends. They closed their business and moved it to Bedok Food Centre in 1995. By then, they’d started selling Ayam Penyet instead.
As their parents had stopped selling prata, older sister Linda felt it was a waste and didn’t want their parents’ unused recipes to be lost. So, she opened GRIDDLE with her younger sister at the same food centre where her parents have their stall.
Linda uses her family’s recipes and innovates by incorporating other Muslim favourites she enjoys. While in Malaysia, she came across a dish she wanted to add to her menu. Of course, her version had some tweaking done with Singaporean taste buds in mind.
That dish is GRIDDLE’s Prata Sarang Burung (S$5.50). It’s meant to look like a bird’s nest circling the two eggs. Traditionally, the meat added around it is mutton.
Still, Linda has decided to go with beef not only because she observed the tastes of Singaporean Muslims but also because her parent’s recipe mainly uses it.
It’s GRIDDLE’s most popular and recommended item, maybe it’s because of how uncommon Prata Sarang Burung is in Singapore.
Like her parents, Linda experiments when finding what to include in their menu. Noticing some customers like thicker prata, she added the BOMB, also known as the Double Dough Prata (S$3.50).
Aside from GRIDDLE’s fish curry that will be plated with their prata, their main meat is beef. On weekends, the sisters even have non-vegetarian Dalcha curry as an option, adding beef terrine.
This is just during weekends because they only have Prata Tsunami Tetel (S$7.50), which is topped with the Dalcha curry then.
For other time-specific dishes GRIDDLE offers, they only start selling Nasi Lemak (S$6.50) at 8am onwards every day. The sisters provide it in fish or chicken. The chicken is not the usual drumlet or wing but a whole quarter.
Linda says she’ll keep experimenting and altering her menu based on her customers and how things fare from here. She admits her methods are old-fashioned, even sticking more to word of mouth to grow GRIDDLE’s reputation. It was how her parents started, so now she and her sister do the same.
While business has been steadily growing, there are still challenges. Linda and Emma struggle with the staffing as it’s just the two of them. She has found that it’s hard to get people willing to work as hawkers and that they hope this will change soon.
If you would like to try GRIDDLE’s limited weekly item, visit over the weekend.
