Dear readers, many years back, I frequented a café, let’s just call it HW café.
I frequented the café for its curry chicken set at $7.80 comprising a good bowl of nonya curry with generous chicken, a bowl of rice, two slices of kaya butter toast and a cup of hot drink (I always ordered Kopi Gao).
Then few rounds of price increase later, the above set went up to some $9.80 or so. With the price increase along with increase of many other daily necessities, I reduced my number of visits to the café.
Then it was around post Covid that the HW café chain had a revamp of its menu. Gone was the toast from the curry chicken set and the set along with curry chicken bowl. Instead, a bowl of rice and a cup of Kopi costs more than $10! Along with the changes to the curry chicken set menu, I also noticed that the portion of all the other meal menus have shrank but with the prices of the set headed up north. I boycotted the HW café chain from then on, but only go to purchase a cup of coffee if I sorely needed one and ran out of options.
It was recently that I had a craving for curry to warm up my bodies amidst the cold from the monsoon surge. I decided to visit the HW chain for the curry chicken set and to satisfy my craving and see what happened next.
I was about to order the set of curry chicken meal at $10.30 when I saw a small print below the set menu that there was an ala carte option at $8.50. I ordered the ala carte as I ordered the meal for dinner and I would not want to be kept awake at night by caffeine.
When the curry chicken set arrived, I was shocked! Gone was the one bowl of yummy curry and chicken and another bowl of rice. Instead, there was just a plate of rice, served with a chicken wing and some curry gravy. Perhaps noticing the portion was small and does not deserve $8.50, the stall assistant also gave me a bowl of additional curry.
$8.50 for the aforementioned revamped curry chicken rice is expensive as for this price, I could get a sumptuous spread from a mixed vegetables stall. The curry rice meal was also hardly filling.
To be very frank, the price of food, transport, etc have increased over the past few years to a quantum that it causes some concern to me. As a result, my savings have headed south.
I have hence choose to just eat a little for my meals to save some monies at times. Eating little and fasting intermittently is also good for the body.
I can never imagine that I will get hungry in our country but in the past few years, the portion of many food that I had has reduced so much in amount that it is not filling. The standard has also generally gone down (perhaps due to reduction of investment in using ingredients or good ingredients). I also do not want to spend more to eat 2 sets of meals just to feel filled for each meal.
The cost of meals is the main component on my daily expenditure and the cost continues to go up and up.