First-time Thai Hawker Sells Phuket Dry Rice Porridge, Inspired By Famous Michelin-Approved Stall
The ex-tour guide used to take tourists to Go Benz in Phuket, famous for this dish which is hard to find here.
The ex-tour guide used to take tourists to Go Benz in Phuket, famous for this dish which is hard to find here.
If you still can’t play in the ‘Phuket Sandbox’ (read: fully vaccinated travelers have been allowed to enter the Thai tourist hotspot quarantine-free since July 1), perhaps you can get a taste of Phuket here. The new Moo Station hawker stall in a Crawford Lane kopitiam sells khao tom haeng (dry rice porridge), which pairs rice with a peppery pork-bone broth and offal. The stall, which officially opened on September 18, is helmed by Pilaiporn Boonchoo (who goes by Sandy here), 36, and her 35-year-old Singaporean husband, David Ang.
The Singaporean PR (who was born in Nahkon Si Thammarat in Southern Thailand) decided to specialise in the dish after eight years as a freelance tour guide in Phuket. Sandy often took tourists to Go Benz, a famous street food spot peddling dry rice porridge that’s been recognized with a Michelin Bib Gourmand since 2019.
We haven’t had a chance to try Moo Station, but we do know that khao tom haeng is exceptionally hard to find here. One restaurant which used to sell it has taken it off the menu. Moo Station’s claim to be “probably the first and only” hawker stall centered around the dish in Singapore is ostensibly true.
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The lady boss never intended to be a hawker. In fact, she’d barely stepped into a kitchen before coming to Singapore in 2015. “My mum used to chase me out of the kitchen [back in Thailand], as she’d say [I can’t get] anything right,” Sandy recalls.
She left Phuket in search of better employment opportunities after an eight-year stint as a tour guide: she found a job here in F&B, and eventually met her husband David, who runs a watch trading business. “When she first came to Singapore, the only thing she could cook was instant noodles and she would also get it wrong,” David shares genially. It was only after she got pregnant in 2016 and began staying at home that she began practising her cooking. “She always wanted to make sure I had a nice dinner to eat [when I came home],” he adds.
The fulltime mum started a home baking and party planning biz in 2018 but had to call it quits when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and large social gatherings became a thing of the past.
As the pandemic wore on, David’s watch trading business “stabilised, and [their] financial situation got safer [to begin considering an F&B business]”. “We considered a Thai restaurant,” offers David, “But we’d be just another Thai restaurant in a sea of restaurants.” Another idea which they dropped was “a drinking place, with Sandy helming the kitchen” due to the uncertainty of the pandemic.
They decided a hawker biz could work, and was far less risky. “[Covid-19] will eventually be over, we just don’t know when,” David says. “People still need to eat and especially so at a hawker centre or kopitiam.”
Eventually, they hatched an idea. “We were talking about how we couldn’t travel for a long time, and went through the food we missed in Thailand and Bangkok. One of the dishes that caught our attention was the dry rice porridge,” David says. Sandy, through her contacts, hopped on the phone with Go Benz in August to discuss a possible partnership, but she was ultimately turned down.
Undeterred, she rang up relatives in Thailand for advice on how to recreate the dish herself, while “watching YouTube videos and reading recipes online”. She experimented for two weeks, before inviting David’s friends over to try out her cooking. “They really liked it, and thought it was quite special, so we began to look for a place,” she says.
Within “three to four days” of looking, they found a space that was “a good deal [for its size and rent]”, David tells us. The couple snapped it up, and decided to open up as quickly as possible. “We could have waited longer, but we’d have to pay the rent while waiting, bleeding money,” he adds. After a month of refurbishment, meetings with suppliers and more practice, Moo Station (moo is Thai for pork) was born, six weeks after the idea was first floated.
Sandy mans the stall with a helper and is in charge of overall operations, while David helps with backend work and marketing. Being self-employed, he also pops by during peak hours, or whenever he is needed to fix urgent issues, of which there were plenty at the start, since their soft-launch on September 7 came so quickly after conceptualisation.
As you can imagine, the hours are grueling. Sandy gets up at five each morning to prepare for the stall’s opening at 11, only reaching home at 9pm. David contributes to the prep work, like marinating the crispy pork for roasting each night. David says, “One thing that’s hard for her is spending less time with our boy (now five years old). She was always with him since day one, but now when he wakes up, she’s already working.”
“I don’t [regret] choosing to be a hawker because I want to do this well, but I also hope that once the business [is] more stable, I can manage the business rather than cook every day,” Sandy shares. “That day, my son hugged me and said: ‘Mum, don’t go to the stall, don’t get lost there’. We both [felt] quite sad.”
Moo Station’s offerings are lean and straightforward: Two sizes of their Signature Pork Dry Rice Porridge (which comes with slightly different toppings) starting at $5; Pork Porridge ($4.50) and accompaniments like Crispy Pork Belly ($6) and Fried Pork Skin ($1.50). There’s even an unorthodox Onsen Egg add-on ($0.80).
Thai Jasmine rice is cooked in a broth – containing pork bones, a mix of white and black pepper, and other “secret” spices – that’s been simmered for four hours, and topped off with lard and whole Thai garlic cloves, both deep-fried. A thinned version of the broth is served alongside the bowl, and toppings include pork rib, handmade meatballs (shaped from marinated minced pork), lean meat, liver and stomach.
A larger version with kidney, small intestine and housemade crispy roasted pork.
A dish that Sandy used to make for her husband and son at home crafted from Jasmine rice and pork-bone broth, with added heft by way of an egg, minced meat and handmade meatballs.
Moo Station’s crispy pork belly is marinated, roasted then deep-fried for optimum crispiness, Sandy tells us. It’s also served alongside a nan jim (Thai-style chill sauce) dip (not pictured).
Supplier-bought crunchy pork skin if you want extra crunch with your dry rice porridge.
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