The Yet Con restaurant (established 1940) at 25 Purvis Street, Singapore has been serving its chicken rice, roast pork, and steamboat menu since we first visited in the mid 1980’s. Historic Purvis Street is a stone’s throw from the Raffles Hotel, Beach Road, the Bras Basah Book Complex (literary), and the new National Library, on the fringe of the historical civic district, in the heart of the old city.

The road is now home to a few other boutique restuarants and eateries, many of whom have not quite survived the ravages of time, competition, and space. On the day we visited, it was a quiet New Year’s Day in the mid-afternoon. The decor is unmistakably old-world Singapore: marble-topped round tables and dark mahogany chairs to match the rich dark sauce that is a world champion for anti-oxidants  free-radical scavengers.

At 77 years of age, the historical restaurant that had previously operated on two levels throughout the day has lost much of its heyday bustle and viv, even if the mid-siesta hour on a holiday is little to  judge its life-force by.

The menu in its most basic form is simple but not austere, and makes no pretensions to be healthy. A chef dishes out more contemporaneous fare when requested. A lady sauntered in earnestly but  walks away disappointed that a prawn fritters order cannot be fulfilled as the chef hasn’t “come in”. Strange, was he absent without leave, or on vacation? The old family hand didn’t say. The language spoken amongst the family here is old-world hainanese, and it is impenetrable to the pedestrian outsider.

In the mid-’90s, it received a brief run of fame when it was captured for a publicity campaign by an advertising agency and won an annual agencies competition. In a moment of profound insight, the competitors realized that this was no cutting-edge offer for the new millennium – the restaurant was merely used for a competitive awards run : it was aptly put, the “best con yet”.

(Lumix DX85, New Year’s Day 2018).