Hawker Culture

by Mica

Rating: teen
Tags: Changelings, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Griffons, Dragons, Slice of Life, Alternate Universe, Yaks, Kirins
Length: 3022

In an increasingly diverse Equestria with equally diverse dietary needs among citizens, the Canterlot International Food Court allows multiple species to eat together in harmony.

At the Canterlot International Food Court, each species, from ponies to dragons to yaks, run self-operated food stalls, subsidized by Princess Twilight’s government, serving the cuisine of their homeland to Equestrians of all creeds and races.

(Although inspired by the hawker centers of Singapore, this story is a work of fiction. Takes place some time after Twilight's coronation.)

Published 2021-11-20 00:20:00 UTC
Last updated 2021-11-20 00:20:00 UTC

Well-fed subjects

Have you ever been to the kirin food stall in the Canterlot International Food Court?

It’s on the west side of the food court, right next to the unicorn desserts stall. It’s stall number 17, the one called Summer River’s Kirin Food.

If you ever do go there, sit at a table nearby, turn your back to the stall, and plug your nose.

And if you listen closely, you can almost hear the flavor of the food as it’s cooked.

The tip of the metal spade clanging against the wok. The sizzling of batter as it’s poured into hot oil. The thump sound of noodle dough as it’s tossed in the air and falls back down on the floured surface.

Through decades of mandated vocal silence, the kirins learned to express themselves through any other method possible. Even music was limited—the bamboo recorder was the only permitted instrument—so kirins resorted to other subtle, non-musical ways to voice themselves that evaded detection.

The kirin chef, having lived under the vow of silence most of his life, still speaks few words. Point to the dish you want on the fluorescent-illuminated menu at his stall, and he’ll just nod his head and get to work.

But listen. He speaks to you the recipe as he cooks. He can express a million words with just the rhythmic motion of his cooking utensils. Each tool is like a part of his voice. The spade is like his tongue, moving along the wok, like the roof of his mouth.

With a fiery nirik hoof, the chef warms up the wok burner.

First, you hear the percussive tapping of metal against metal. Then the sound of liquid, sizzling onto the wok, with a thin, high-frequency trickle that must be like a drizzle. Then the impact of something hard against the edge of the wok—a sharp “crack”, and then more sizzling. Then the scraping sound of metal against metal, warping to and from very high frequencies and screechingly high frequencies. You hear the chef’s hooves shift, the friction against the floor making a sound. It’s a rough sound. There must be a thin layer of dirt or dust on the tiles.

And at the end, even before you open your eyes, unplug your nose, and turn back around, you can already guess he’s going to say. “Order number 45, one medium egg fried rice with mixed vegetable.” 5 Bits.

Changelings traditionally did not have any concept of “food.”

Food, in the traditional sense of the word, passes inertly through the gullet of a changeling. The love from others is their sole source of energy.

But as changelings became more assimilated to the pony ways of life after their reformation, they’ve began to fit the pony concept of “food”: tangible consumable physical items, into their cultural identity.

Ask ten changelings in Canterlot the reason for this change, and you’ll get eleven different answers. Some may say that creating a peaceful changeling food culture helps to distance themselves from their marauding past. A few may say that they don’t want to be seen as “love-sucking creatures.” Even if they still do consume love for nourishment, but by “sharing” instead of “consuming.” It’s a fact of their anatomy that they choose to downplay, or perhaps intentionally deny, as some other changelings might claim.

Changeling “cuisine” did not even exist thirty years ago. As a result, it is young, innovative, and constantly evolving. The changeling chef who runs a food stall in the International Food Court describes changeling cuisine as the “cuisine of empathy.”

Changeling dishes are designed to mimic the flavors of love that a typical changeling may taste in everyday situations, through heavy use of spices. Presentation and flavor take precedence over caloric and nutritional density.

The smooth blended texture of the “Queen of the Hive” gourd soup (7.5 Bits) mimics the velvety softness of a motherly love. The heavy use of nutmeg and cinnamon in the “Love Affair” casserole (3 Bits per slice) reminds one of the feeling of cuddling up under the sheets with a loved one on a cold winter’s night. The colorful shapes of the soy-paper veggie rolls (6 Bits for 6 pieces) mimic the emotion one feels just upon waking up on a sunny day. The vegetables are sharp and crisp, mimicking the sensory overload of the sudden onslaught of sun and colors and smells and birds singing outside your window.

“Black Soup of Death” (2 Bits per cup), mimicking the last trickle of love that emanates from a dying creature, is strangely one of the most popular dishes offered at the changeling food stall. Black sesame is mixed with bitter melon juice and sugar to create an oddly bittersweet taste, mixed with coarse earthiness of the sesame.

There's a young earth pony mare who sits with her kirin friends at a table. The pony grabs the bowl of Death Soup with two hooves and pours it straight into her mouth. We ask her: why does she drink this Death Soup so enthusiastically?

“Because now I know what death is like,” the pony says. “I was so scared of it, after I saw my husband die. But tasting this…somehow I feel like I’m less scared. I understand the feeling of death. And now I know that he left in peace.”

There was once a saying that when a stallion wants to get his marefriend an engagement ring, the stubborn rich stallion goes to the finest jeweler in Canterlot and spends 1000 Bits.

The clever poor stallion spends less than 1 percent of that, and buys the exact same gem at the dragon food stall at the International Food Court.

Dragon foods were traditionally very crudely prepared, reflecting the harsh landscape of their home environment. Good food for many dragons simply means “high energy” with “lots of gems.” But in Equestria, dragons have begun to take more care to balancing flavors and crafting artful dishes, as in pony cuisine. The Dragon Dessert Delights stall, for example, sells shaved ice with crushed gemstone garnish (5 Bits, +2 Bits for extra gems). The gemstones are said to add a sweet taste. Kirins, who discovered that they were able to digest dragon foods such as gems, can also be found enjoying these shaved ice desserts.

With the large influx of dragons moving into Equestria due to loosened immigration laws, so grew the demand for polished gems for consumption. (Polishing gems is said to greatly improve the taste and mouthfeel of the gems for dragons.)

These gem imports from the Dragonlands (sometimes railway cars full of them) had unintended economic consequences for Canterlot. In less than ten years, there was a sudden and unprecedented dilution of the gem market that caused the value of precious stone jewelry in Equestria to plummet. Canterlot jewelers, some of them a family business for hundreds of years, saw their business drop by 90% or more. Protests occurred outside the Canterlot Castle.

The dragon food vendors, not wanting to interfere with the gem market, held closed-door talks with the jewelers and came to a provisional solution. The gems at dragon food stalls would be sold polished, but with a small “X” or similar marking scratched on the surface. Imperceptible to the dragon consumer’s palate, but worthless to use in jewelry. This was formalized with the royal decree known as the Precious Gem Market Stabilization Act.

The dragons don’t mind, but tough luck for the poor stallion looking for a nice engagement ring.

They say that you should eat yak food if you’re a professional athlete, and/or if you want to be healthy.

And there aren’t any other good reasons.

Given the harsh winters of Yakyakistan and their traditionally active lifestyle, yak food is decidedly simple and wholesome, prioritizing nutrition over taste. Breakfast is no more than a simple oat gruel, traditionally made from frozen grain left out in the snow (1.5 Bits per bowl). Syrup, served on the side, is only a very recent luxury introduced by ponies.

For lunch or dinner, there’s steamed potato momos (4.5 Bits for 6 pieces), or spiced millet gruel served in a gourd (3 Bits), which can be best described by a five-year-old colt as “salty oatmeal in a pumpkin”.

But the older yak who runs the stall plans to continue running it for as long as he lives. “Yak love make yak food. Make yak remember home.”

“Do you wish you were back home?”

The yak chef sighs. “No home anymore. Too few yaks back home. When Equestria and Yakyakistan no speak for thousand years, no yak move. But now yaks speak with ponies. And now all yak move to Equestria.”

He pauses.

“Sometimes yak wish we still no speak with ponies.”

Since reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Equestria, combined with looser immigration laws after Princess Twilight’s ascension, Yakyakistan has experienced severe depopulation, with yaks moving in droves to the warmth and greater economic prospects of Equestria. The youngest generation of yaks—the yak chef’s grandsons—speak in a standard Equestrian dialect.

The younger yaks seem to be more excited about ice cream, hayburgers, or whatever tempting smells are coming from the other food stalls. The corner of the food court nearest to the yak food stall is chronically empty, save for a cabal of older yaks who sit around playing mancala and discussing arcane smashing techniques over fermented milk and oat gruel.

Scholars fear a complete erasure of traditional yak culture within the next two centuries, as the older generation dies out. As the yaks watch their culture slip away, the pony scholars sit hunched on their desks in the comfortably heated Canterlot Library, scribbling 200-page dissertations about Yakyakistan’s inevitable demise.

“Yakyakistan gone. Equestria new home now.” The yak sheds a tear. But maybe it’s from the yovidaphone music playing on the portable stereo.

Subsidies from Princess Twilight’s government will keep his stall afloat, so as to ensure the yaks remain well-represented in the Equestrian food scene. This way, even if Yakyakistan were to be completely depopulated in the next century, there’ll still be a little relic of it, right here in a 100 square foot food stall in Canterlot.

“Too little. Too late.” is all the yak chef says to that.

The yak chef turns up the volume on the portable stereo playing yovidaphone music, and returns to stirring his millet gruel and scraping off the burnt bits on the sides of the pot.

(The real yovidaphone was too big to fit inside the 100 square foot space.)

A group of half-nervous, half-curious pony colts sit at the table closest to the griffon food stall, trembling with morbid fascination as they watch the griffon chef nonchalantly skin a dead rabbit.

Meat has never been explicitly banned in Equestria, despite a long-standing taboo. A few species outside Equestria are traditional meat eaters. There’s the griffons of course. Then there’s the hippogriffs who eat fish, particularly sardines. The kirins consume roast duck during special occasions. (You can order one to go at Summer River’s Kirin Food stall for 50 Bits, vacuum-sealed, with complementary rice and duck sauce.) Even ponies were recorded to have consumed the meat of small critters as a last resort during the times of the Windigoes, according to ancient texts.

But none of these seem to bother Equestrians as much as the griffons’ diet of various small birds and other game. Some griffons would call it discrimination, being unfairly treated as meat eaters because of their raptor-like bodies and their aggressive, highly individualistic culture. The relatively peaceful, gregarious, and more “pony-like” kirins rarely suffer the same condemnation for their diet.

Ironically, as meat becomes more commonplace in a diverse Equestria, more attempts have been made to outright ban its consumption. The Canterlot Concerned Parents have called for a ban on butchering animals in the public view, stating that the graphic violence would traumatize the children who eat at the International Food Court.

Looking back at the gang of pony colts staring at the griffon butchering meat, the so-called tough kid crying 8-year-old tears of regret, the sensitive kid looking away to throw up in a bag…you can’t help but wonder that maybe the concerned parents are right.

Then there’s a group of ponies who are quite the opposite: they’re absolutely fascinated with the novelty of eating meat. Tourists from other parts of Equestria come to the food court just to be able to snap pictures of meat being sold as food. A few very brave ponies will actually consume it, often as part of a drunken dare among young, adventurous ponies. Late-night fried venison fritters with ice-cold cider is a best-seller at Glenda’s Griffon Gastronomy, one of the most successful griffon food stalls in the food court. (After all, when you’re intoxicated, you can’t tell whether you’re throwing up from the meat or from the alcohol.)

We speak to one of the griffons who was butchering a rabbit for a stew in preparation for the lunch rush. His frustration is evident in his voice, even for a griffon. “A lot of them don’t even come here to eat,” the stall owner says. “I’ve just become like a sideshow for ponies to gawk at. They take pictures, blocking my paying customers who’re standing in line. I’ve just become free entertainment for them.”

At least one griffon-operated stall in the food court has decided to simply not sell meat. A few others have chosen to butcher their meat in a separate closed facility, and then deliver it to the food stall sealed neatly in plastic containers.

This griffon isn’t as fortunate, and his business cannot afford a separate facility to butcher meat. “Don’t get me wrong, I love making friends,” the griffon says, his eyes still glued to the rabbit he’s butchering. “There’s this stereotype that griffons are cold and unloving, I’m totally not like that. Argh…hold up, I need to focus on this…YAAARGH!”

With a loud cawing scream, he uses his cleaver to break through a tough bit of bone in the rabbit.

He continues talking. “Where was I? Oh yeah, you know, I’m friends with lots of different creatures. My son’s teachers are ponies. I play buckball with my yak and pony friends. But this isn’t right. Princess Twilight wants to create this so-called unified space where we can express our traditional food culture, and somehow magically we’ll all become best friends or whatever...but I don’t think Equestria is ready for this.”

“They aren’t?”

“Not yet, at least.”

And with one more fell swoop, he chops a leg off the rabbit with his cleaver, blood spraying in all directions.

Under Princess Twilight’s rule, Equestria has become an increasingly diverse nation thanks to more open immigration policies. The capital city of Canterlot is filled with dragons, kirin, yaks, changelings, griffons, hippogriffs, and of course all three pony races. Although all species are generally amenable to pony food, non-ponies can feel left out without foods that suit their dietary restrictions and preferences, thereby impeding Princess Twilight’s mission of universal Friendship. Ponies are curious to try other species’ native cuisines as well.

After a successful pilot program in the School of Friendship cafeteria, one of Princess Twilight’s first royal decrees after ascending to the throne was establishing the first “International Food Court” in central Canterlot. Each food stall would sell cuisines from the different species living in Equestria and beyond. Rents would be subsidized by the government, and quotas would ensure that all species could have their local food culture represented.

Over 80 stalls currently operate in the Canterlot International Food Court, run by creatures of all species. Everycreature can buy the food from the stalls that best suit their dietary needs, and then take it to the common eating area in the middle where all species can congregate and eat their meals together. Ponies can explore the cuisines of their friends of different species, and vice versa.

The interior of the food court is spartan. To ensure accessibility for all species while minimizing costs, all the tables and chairs are made with solid, fireproof concrete that can support the weight of a yak and resist flames of over 2000C. The corrugated metal roof is at least ten ponies high, to enable free flight for all species. It almost reminds you of a great big cavern.

Despite the no-frills service, creatures of all social classes come to savor the cheap but authentic dishes. Embassy workers in Canterlot frequent here during their lunch break, to get a taste of their homeland far away. Even some of the Canterlot old elite can be stopped queueing for a “garbage plate” of baked beans, fried potatoes, onions, ketchup, mayonnaise, and melted cheese (product) at the Appaloosan food stall. (Once Princess Twilight loves it, the Canterlot elite will follow.)

The first International Food Court in Canterlot has been an astounding commercial and social success, generating millions of Bits in tax revenue and personal income for stall owners. The Equestrian government plans to open additional food courts in Canterlot, as well as one in Manehattan.

Grab a tray, buy your favorite dish. Take a seat. No matter who you are, you’ll find something you enjoy. Every food from every corner of the planet, each neatly boxed in its own little government-allotted stall.

Look at the smiling faces of the hippogriffs, the kirins, the ponies, the changelings, the dragons, the yaks, all sitting together for a meal that suits each of their individual palettes exactly. Everyone sitting under the same metal roof, under the same air, under the same sun.

Different, yet Friends.

And the royal coat of arms, “The Emblem of Universal Friendship”, is hung up precariously high on the wall of the Food Court, looking down on her happy, well-fed subjects.

But you’ll enjoy the food. So why should you let that bother you?

Author's Note

Started out as a cute slice of life fic, then it turned weird and dark. :pinkiecrazy: Comment below on what one dish you’d most like to eat! For me, it’s the roast duck. :rainbowwild:

Please direct typos to PM, thank you.