Among the twelve hawker food items I suggested for the Singapore Day event in New York, I threw in chwee kueh, a wild card item. It’s not one of those big league top ten local soulfood that we all swear by. It was like a Sanjaya in the American Idol. Folk like it but is not sure if it should be in the list. We even had a concerned (bordering on jealous) member of public questioning “why you select them?”.

And on that warm fateful spring day in Central Park, a one hundred thick queue quickly made a beeline for chwee kueh at the stoke of 11am, the opening hour. They lines at the bak kut teh, roti kaya and laksa ware way tamer.

By 12.20pm, they were the first to sell out. They cleared about 1200 chwee kuehs, one to a customer each, topped it with chai po and sambal and was washing up by 12.30, leaving at least 80 desperate souls staring at a yellow “sold out” sign and hanging on to a hope that another 200 would magically appear. By 1pm, there were helping the carrot cake chef dish out the first of their 1400 portions for that day.

Even VIP guest DPM Mr Wong Kan Seng, who rushed from Washington just to greet the folks there and to seek a moment of silence for the unfortunate victims of the schoolyard shootout in Virginia Tech, could not get his favourite chwee kueh. It was then that the crowd at Wollman Rink in Central Park swelled to about 3000 visitors. The intensely charming Kit Chan came on and warmed the stage with her version of Sinead O Connor’s Nothing Compares to You but almost all there had their backs to her as it was obvious- nothing compares to having their soulful fix of nasi lemak and chicken rice, and none was prepared to loose their spot in the queue. The food stalls were facing the stage at the other end of the rink.

I helped pal Anthony Bourdain cut entrance queue but with one look at the crowd within, he made a quick retreat for home with his uncomfortably bawling new baby girl in tow. Without a bite to show.

The usually gregarious Thye Hong, who often “coo-coo” like a chicken before he cracks eggs onto his wok of cha kway teow and fried Hokkien prawn mee, suddenly went sober and quiet. Each time he looks up from his al-fresco hawker station, one hundred hungry and gentle overseas fellow citizens would be impatiently smiling at him. “Eh, brother, these overseas Singaporeans huh, very kwai (orderly) leh, never cut queue and never tell me to faster faster.”, as he whispered in the same Singlish host Hossan Leong was attempting on stage to “reconnect” with the crowd. By 5pm, a little past closing time, he stayed on to clear the last few patient latecomers, serving out his 1600th portion. Among them was Ms Cheryl Tan a wordsmith at Wall St Journal and her husband Mike. “This is so so good. Please don’t let them leave!”, as she tucks into her favourite fried Hokkien mee. Some of the friends came from as far as Canada and even Jeddah in the Middle East.

Mr Calvin Trillin, the legendary food humourist from the New Yorker Magazine, was a tad sharper. He took my advice and came two hours before opening to speak to the hawkers and taste the samplers. By 12pm, he ate all at the rink and thus began his initiation to his trip to Singapore for more next month. Even Mr Jeffrey Steingarten, food critic of Vogue Magazine, as he was devouring an extra large plate, regretted that he did not have that fried Hokkien mee in the lion’s den when he visited Singapore in March, although he remembered Tian Tian’s chicken rice to be a notch better when he first tried it at Maxwell Food Centre.

The hawkers had to use all ingredients and equipments from New York, due to regulations and restrictions. And because the limitations and knowledge of the suppliers there ( they had problems telling light from thick soy sauce, let alone sweet soy sauce) many of the hawkers had to compromise and improvise, a key criteria I bore in mind when selecting them. Hence, the chwee kuehs masters had to steam their 1200 kuehs 39 at a time in dim sum steamers, instead of the 300 each in their regular steamers. Thye Hong had to make his own sweet soy sauce with brown rock sugar. They managed well but it took them each on average, seven hours of prep work in the big but ill equipped central kitchen. I would say they managed to deliver about 80% of their original food quality.

By 4.30pm, the crowd subsided as most of the stalls had already sold out. By then, the close to 6000 happy overseas Singaporeans had consumed tasting portions of: 1200 chwee kuehs, 1400 plates of carrot cake, 1600 plates of char kway teow, 50 kilos of BBQ seafood and stingray, 1300 plates of chicken rice, 30 kilos of kaya, 1200 pieces of pork ribs in bak kut teh, 1300 bowls of laksa, 1600 portions of roti prata, 4000 sticks of satay, 1300 plates of nasi lemak and about 1800 portions of chilli and pepper crabs.

In short, 16,000 happy meals were served to 6000 happy (some understandably impatient) overseas Singaporeans at Singapore Day in Wollman Rink. And it closed fittingly when Kit Chan sang her anthem “this is home truly.”