SINGAPORE \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After Mr Soh\u2019s mother died of melanoma in 2024, he came to treasure those memories even more.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The set also includes figurines of Mr Soh and his late mother.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When he saw the detailed replica, however, he was overcome with emotion.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n \u201cI 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,\u201d he said in an interview with The Straits Times.<\/p>\n \u201cWe argued sometimes, but at the end of the day everything that happened would stay within the stall. And, after that, we\u2019re mother and son again.\u201d<\/p>\n The replica\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n The set features miniature pieces, modelled after Mr Soh\u2019s drink blender, ice bucket and bottles of condiments, with a brick-by-brick recreation of his original stall\u2019s layout.<\/p>\n Mr Hine also presented a replica of the Rahmath Cheese Prata hawker stall in Toa Payoh to its retired owner, who declined to be interviewed.<\/p>\n These were two of the American\u2019s favourite hawker stalls in Singapore, which he has been visiting regularly since 2005 because his wife has family here. <\/p>\n Mr Hine, an engineer who lives in Dallas, Texas, said he took nine months to design and complete the sets.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Lego sets, which he gave the two Singapore hawkers in March 2025, went viral online after he posted pictures of them on forum platform Reddit on April 21.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI love the multiculturalism of Singapore and the obsession with food; all of these things come together in hawker centres,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou could see guys sitting at a table sipping coffee, a family at another table, or nicely dressed office people coming to pick up food before going back to work.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou also have these hawkers who specialise in this one thing that they have to make a thousand times a day, and they\u2019re so good at it. This high level of attention to detail is something you get in mainly high-end restaurants in the US, but it\u2019s something everyone in Singapore has.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Mr Hine started building Lego sets in his childhood, and resumed his hobby three years ago as a way to relax.\u00a0<\/p>\n He hit upon the idea of building hawker stalls after seeing photos of sushi and ramen shop miniature replicas online.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHawker stalls have so much meaning to me and I wanted to have something from Singapore that I recognise, so that when I look at it at home I can remember the good times I had there,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mr Hine referred to photos in his personal archives and Google Images of the hawker stalls, before designing the model using the Lego Studio app.\u00a0<\/p>\n He made sure to get as many details as possible \u201cright\u201d, he said, from the signature red cup used by the Rahmath Cheese Prata stall, to Mr Soh\u2019s dark blue ice bucket at Toast Hut.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mr Matthew Hine\u2019s miniature model of Rahmath Cheese Prata features the hawker stall\u2019s signature red cup hanging in the background.<\/p>\n PHOTO: MATTHEW HINE<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Both shop owners looked shocked when they received the replicas, Mr Hine recalled. They also sent him thank-you messages later.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mr Soh even met Mr Hine on his day off and gave him some coffee drip bags.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mr Hine recounted: \u201cIn any job, it\u2019s easy to feel like you\u2019re working anonymously. You never really know how someone out there could be impacted by what you do. If I were in their shoes, I would want someone to go, \u2018Hey, I like your food so much I built this model of your shop\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cI was worried they would think I was a bit crazy, but it turned out to be so much more than I\u2019d originally thought.\u00a0Melvin told me the story about his mum and I was fighting back tears.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cShahul (the previous owner of Rahmath Cheese Prata) told me he retired recently. It\u2019s turned into this way for me to connect with actual people in Singapore and it feels nice for me to contribute a little bit to this culture I\u2019ve come to respect.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Hine has also built Lego sets of wet market stalls and tea shops in Hong Kong, documenting them on Instagram. He plans to make more replicas of hawker stalls, but first has to find room at home to display them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/picture><\/div>
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