SINGAPORE – For more than 15 years, Mr Melvin Soh ran a hawker stall selling breakfast items in Old Airport Road Food Centre with his mum. The highlight of his days, as they toiled alongside each other from 2007 to 2024, were lunch breaks with her.
Every morning, the pair took turns brewing coffee and tea and toasting sandwiches at their stall, Toast Hut, before having lunch together and heading home. Sometimes, they ate minced meat noodles; other times, they had duck rice.
After Mr Soh’s mother died of melanoma in 2024, he came to treasure those memories even more.
The 42-year-old was thus at a loss for words when American tourist Matthew Hine turned up at his shop, which has moved to an office building in Bukit Merah, and presented him with a replica of his former stall made entirely of Lego toy bricks.
The set also includes figurines of Mr Soh and his late mother.
Mr Hine, 48, had contacted the stall owner on Instagram just the week before about building a replica of his stall, but Mr Soh felt slightly apprehensive when he read the message as he did not know the man.
When he saw the detailed replica, however, he was overcome with emotion.
Mr Melvin Soh, 42, with a Lego replica of his Toast Hut stall in Old Airport Road Food Centre, on April 27. He ran the hawker stall selling breakfast items with his mother for more than 15 years.
ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
“I was touched because the figurines look just like us. My mum was usually the one helping me and she passed away two years ago, so this symbolises her efforts setting up the stall with me and reminds me of her,” he said in an interview with The Straits Times.
“We argued sometimes, but at the end of the day everything that happened would stay within the stall. And, after that, we’re mother and son again.”
The replica’s likeness to the Old Airport Road hawker stall was a delightful surprise, said Mr Soh, who was moved that Mr Hine had appreciated his food enough to create the diorama.
The set features miniature pieces, modelled after Mr Soh’s drink blender, ice bucket and bottles of condiments, with a brick-by-brick recreation of his original stall’s layout.
