Man gifts Lego builds to hawker stall owners as keepsakes
While the Merlion might be the most iconic landmark in Singapore, it is its hawker stalls that have captured the hearts of visitors to the Lion City.
One visitor, 48-year-old Matthew Hine, was so enraptured by the food and culture that he was inspired to recreate the stalls using Lego.
On 21 April, he shared photos of his creations on Reddit where it quickly grabbed the attention of Singaporeans online.
Source: Reddit
Lego builds include mini hawker centre tables
In his Reddit post, Matthew, who is from the United States (US), said that he has developed a fondness for Singapore culture, especially its hawker centres.
“I decided I wanted to try to capture a bit of the magic in a couple of custom Lego designs,” Matthew wrote.
To get started, he picked his two favorite spots on the island: Toast Hut and Rahmath Cheese Prata.
“To try to get the details right, I worked from a bunch of photos from Google and some I took myself when visiting,” he added.
As part of the post, Matthew shared 11 photos of the two hawker stall Lego recreations — including the cooks and an accompanying table for each.
Sharing his love of Singapore and its culture
Speaking to MS News, Matthew shared exactly how Singapore managed to carve its own spot in his heart.
“I’ve been visiting Singapore for 25 years and even though I didn’t grow up in Singapore, sitting down at one of my favourite hawkers centres feels so comforting, like home somehow,” he said.
Matthew was especially impressed by the diversity of culture and seeing how people bonded over food.
Image courtesy of Matthew Hine
He compared Singapore’s food culture to his own in the US.
“I’m from the US and eating out here is so dominated by big franchises, big restaurants, big menus, always the drive to scale up,” he explained.
“In comparison, hawkers often just have one or two people making just one thing (with small variations) with simple ingredients, so they have to choose the ingredients carefully and get really good at making that thing very well (and very quickly).”
Matthew said this resulted in a “perfection of craft” that he has rarely seen in the US outside of high-end fine dining.
“I could endlessly watch prata flipping at Rahmath or Toast Hut’s special kopi blend being brewed,” he added.
Building the sets like an engineer
Matthew turned his admiration into inspiration and began creating the Lego sets, but it was not all smooth sailing.
“I’ve probably put around 200 hours into designing, building, and revising these two sets,” he said, adding that he’s “relatively new” as a Lego builder.
Courtesy of Matthew Hine
Matthew further explained that he has been creating custom Lego sets for the past few years, but at a “pretty slow pace”.
To begin, he always starts by finding as many reference photos as he can, online or from those he took himself.
He even noted an interesting discovery he made during his research process for one of the hawkers.
“On Google you find images across many years and you can see the stall and its preparation process evolving over time, while other things never change,” Matthew said.
“For example, on a shelf at Rahmath there’s this red mug that is always there in every picture across many years, so I had to include it into the Lego version.”
Source: Kelvin Ooi on Facebook
Once he feels ready, Matthew loads up the Lego Studio app — which he said was very familiar to him because of his background in mechanical engineering.
“I usually do several iterations of a design there, order a set of parts to build it, then almost always do a big revision based on the physical build process,” he explained.
Sharing his creations with the hawkers
In his most recent visit to the Lion City, Matthew brought along his completed creation to share it with the hawkers who inspired them.
In the time he took to make the sets, something had happened to one of the stalls that made his gift resonate even more.
“By the time I came back with the completed sets as gifts, Toast Hut had closed their Old Airport Road location and moved,” Matthew shared.
“When I met the owner and gave him the little Lego version of his old stall, he was quite touched because it gave him something to remember the place he’d put his life into for many years alongside his mother.”
I was so happy that the silly little plastic thing I built could give him that.
Courtesy of Matthew Hine
In addition to the two hawker stalls, Matthew has also made a custom Lego of the ice cream bikes which have become crowd favourites along Orchard Road.
He told MS News it was based on the mini set Lego had made themselves for SG50, but he had added extra details.
Matthew has since shared the details of how to make the sets on his website here.
His work was met with much joy online, with a few even wishing to make the set themselves or even see them featured in exhibits.
Also read: Commemorative SG50 Lego set resurfaces online, sparks nostalgia among S’porean netizens
Commemorative SG50 Lego set resurfaces online, sparks nostalgia among S’porean netizens
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Featured image courtesy of Matthew Hine.Â
