I have more than two decades of experience of ordering (and eating) caifan.
‘Caifan’（菜饭）or “vegetable rice” in Chinese is a common food dish found all over Singapore, such as coffee shops, hawker centres and even air-conditioned food courts. Essentially, diners start with a base of white rice (or a healthier brown rice option if the stall offers it) and select the dishes they wish, such as meat, vegetables, fish and so on. Most diners do not bother naming the dish they want, and they will just point at the items and say ‘zhe ge, na ge’（这个，那个), which means “this one, that one”.
There’s even a song dedicated to caifan by musicians Annette Lee and Benjamin Kheng:
My history with caifan
My earliest memories of caifan was from secondary school, especially as a lunch option if I needed to stay back in school for extracurricular activities. The caifan stall was the first stall in the entire line of stalls, and the kind elderly caifan stall lady usually would throw in additional vegetable curry on top of what I was ordering, all for the great price of S$1. For a…
