Continuing to celebrate hawker food in Singapore. I had previously shown two Hawker Centres which are purpose built by the government for cooked food stalls. Today, I feature small coffee shops, which we call kopi tiam (literally kopi = coffee, Nanyang coffee, typically robusta or liberica beans roasted with margarine, tiam = shop). These are built by the Housing and Development Board (HDB), here we have an older neighbourhood in Whampoa. Residential apartments are in the high rise building above the kopi tiam.
The kopi tiam is usually the heart of the community. And residents nearby would go have their coffee and meals, and stay to chat.
I photographed this with the Hasselblad H3D-39 with HCD 4/28 lens. Converted to monochrome jpeg on Phocus. The digital images feel a bit too clean and clinical. For this next photograph, I added some noise in Photoshop. Do you think it made a difference? Should I have added more noise?
Meals at kopi tiams all around the island usually cost more than in the Hawker Centres, where rentals are less expensive. Hawker Centres are government owned, and kopi tiams, though are in government built premises, are commercial concerns, usually with the coffee operator being the anchor tenant.
Around these neighbourhoods we also find other convenience shops, and in older estates, some traditional businesses, like this dried food shop just across from the kopi tiam.
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