Writer says S'pore hawkers raise prices for first time in 40 years, Redditors baffled

Below is an extract from the original article "Singapore's Hawkers Raise Prices for First Time in 40 Years" by Food & Wine.

Walk into just about any hawker center in Singapore, and there isn’t just one story; there are hundreds. From a Hainanese chicken and rice chef who quit his stall after forty years, only to open a new one just two stalls away — they’re calling it the “Chicken Rice Wars” — to a woman slinging fish balls reportedly only to customers she likes, hawker centers are more than just food courts. They’re hubs of culture, a part of Singapore inextricable from the national identity. And while Singapore has evolved into one of the most expensive cities in the world, renowned for its architecture as well as the sheer number of luxury shopping centers, there has always been one thing that has remained consistent despite the melange of cultures and shifts in identity: The food at hawker centers has remained accessibly priced. During a recent one-week stay, I gorged myself at hawker centers across the city-state, with meals costing no more than $5, inclusive of nasi lemak, a simple coconut rice served with fresh sambal and fried fish, as well as laksa wherever I could spot it. But the idyllic lifestyle of slurping up Michelin-starred soya sauce chicken and noodles for just $3 may be disappearing. While prices at hawker stalls were steady for almost 40 years and counting, hawkers all over Singapore are taping up signs to announce that they are raising their prices. It’s not for a lack of business. About 83% of Singaporeans visit a hawker center at least once a week for a meal, according to the Singaporean government. This makes sense: After all, a meal here is often more affordable than cooking at home, and certainly more convenient altogether. Rent isn’t the problem, either. Hawker centers were first created as a more controlled alternative to open-air street food carts, and have since become UNESCO protected sites funded by the government. Instead, hawkers have been forced to raise their prices as a result of global inflation, which has driven up the cost of just about every ingredient coming into the world’s second busiest port.