{"id":11568,"date":"2017-06-17T17:12:31","date_gmt":"2017-06-17T09:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=11568"},"modified":"2017-06-17T17:12:31","modified_gmt":"2017-06-17T09:12:31","slug":"yakun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2017\/06\/17\/yakun\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Ya Kun Kaya Toast “Authentic”? [2013]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally <\/em>posted <\/em><\/a>on Poached Mag in 2013.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was having kopi with some friends at Ya Kun Kaya Toast. <\/strong>A friendly auntie spoke to us in cheery Singlish as she cleared our table. Someone remarked later that Ya Kun feels really \u201cauthentic\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200anot just because of the familiar butter-roast of the arabica beans, but because of aunties like her.<\/p>\n

After all, coffee shops these days employ cheaper foreign labour. We can\u2019t blame them for that when the cost of everything is rising. But foreigners don\u2019t always speak English, and they rarely ever speak Singlish. It\u2019s frustrating to buy coffee sometimes, you know? Sometimes it feels like your country isn\u2019t yours anymore, unless you\u2019re in Ya Kun.<\/p>\n

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Image credit: Simleikopitiam<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I found myself nodding in agreement. But then I got thinking about this \u201cauthenticity\u201d. <\/em>What is it, exactly? Wikipedia says\u2026<\/p>\n

Authenticity refers to the truthfulness of origins, attributions, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That sounds nice until you remember that truth is a very subjective thing. <\/strong>We often take something to be true not because it\u2019s actually <\/em>true, but because we\u2019d like it to be. We just need it to feel <\/em>authentic enough so that it doesn\u2019t bother us.<\/p>\n

\u201cAuthentic\u201d can be a political weapon.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

When we claim something to be authentic, we imply that whatever remains, by contrast, is inauthentic. The coffee shop at my void deck might be considered \u201cinauthentic\u201d compared to Ya Kun because it hires foreigners. They weren\u2019t born here. They weren\u2019t raised here.<\/p>\n

But this is what Singapore is today. <\/em>Migrant workers have always been a part of it. Ya Kun\u2019s founder, Loi Ah Koon, was a migrant worker himself. Yet we hardly see migrant workers in our glossy (and authentic?) National Day videos. I wonder why?<\/p>\n

Who gets to decide what is or isn’t authentic?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

What if some old coffee shop uncle came along, cleared his throat and spat at Ya Kun for \u201cselling out\u201d? Would his word (or phlegm) count for anything?<\/p>\n

Or is it up to the consumers? And if so, which consumers? If The New York Times wanted to do a piece about Singapore\u2019s coffee culture, would you bring them to Ya Kun, or to your local PRC-staffed coffee shop under your HDB block? Which one would you choose?<\/p>\n

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Image credit:\u00a0NYtimes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Actually, the NY Times DID do a piece on Singapore\u2019s kopitiams<\/a>. The bulk of the attention was given to Heap Seng Leong Kopitiam at North Bridge Road, which is by any measure even more authentic than Ya Kun. The uncle there still wears singlets!<\/p>\n

Ya Kun was described as a successful \u201cMcDonaldization\u201d of kopitiams. Which\u2026 kinda sounds like an insult. Nobody would cite McDonald\u2019s as an authentic part of their local culture. But that doesn\u2019t mean that McDonald\u2019s can\u2019t be a meaningful member of the community. Ya Kun has a valid place in today\u2019s kopi-ecosystem, whether we like it or not. (I personally like it.)<\/p>\n

Is authenticity just about nostalgia?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Whoever commoditizes<\/a> the past most effectively\u2026 wins? That\u2019s what we\u2019re paying for, more than the kopi itself. To be brought \u201cback to the good old days\u201d for a few moments before we get back to work. To a past that exists primarily in our reconstructed memories.<\/p>\n

Memories are always reconstructed, not retrieved, so they\u2019re heavily influenced by our present circumstances. A couple of decades ago, a regular kopitiam might\u2019ve been considered embarrassing, clunky, old-fashioned.<\/p>\n

Today, patronising one shows that you have \u201cculture\u201d. You might even bring your forward-thinking angmoh <\/em>business partners to Heap Seng Leong. (Featured in New York Times, you know!) But you probably <\/em>wouldn\u2019t bring them to the coffeeshop under your block.<\/p>\n

A little too real, maybe.<\/p>\n

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Image credit: blog.naver<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a Sunday Times article back in 2010 put it, there\u2019s no way that Ah Koon would\u2019ve imagined his small-time coffee stall at Telok Ayer Basin would become regionally synonymous with kaya toast, half-boiled eggs and hot, creamy kopi. He would never have imagined that a bunch of geeks would be attempting to debate the philosophy of authenticity over his coffee (and that one of them would then write an article about it on the Internet).<\/p>\n

But then and again, it was his can-do, entrepreneurial spirit that got him started, so he probably would\u2019ve approved of how it all turned out. Especially considering the dedication to quality\u200a\u2014\u200as<\/em>taff members might go through a few hundred eggs before they start making them good enough to meet Ya Kun\u2019s standards. The company also has a wonderful no-questions-asked exchange policy.<\/p>\n

This commitment to quality is something that remains \u201cauthentic\u201d, even if we\u2019re having our kopi in the air-conditioned comfort of futuristically named Fusionopolis instead of rustic Telok Ayer Basin with the gruff singlet-wearing uncles and grating plastic chairs.<\/p>\n

In the end, maybe authenticity is a weasel word we use for\u00a0quality.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s like \u201cBe yourself\u201d, which we say when we really mean \u201cbe comfortable and likeable.\u201d Maybe \u201cauthentic\u201d is simply a way of saying \u201creally good\u201d.<\/p>\n

Because otherwise either everything is authentic, or nothing is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted on Poached Mag in 2013. I was having kopi with some friends at Ya Kun Kaya Toast. A friendly auntie spoke to us in cheery Singlish as she cleared our table. Someone remarked later that Ya Kun feels really \u201cauthentic\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200anot just because of the familiar butter-roast of the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[601],"tags":[641,26],"class_list":["post-11568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-food","tag-singapore"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/yakun-kaya-toast.jpg?fit=600%2C399&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5gxNz-yakun","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}