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He may be right, i am a tad irrational when it comes to these tiny flakes of golden brown fried onions in soups.

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I love fish soup. It is ample, hearty, full of goodness. the saltiness of the seafood usually balanced by ginger and evaporated milk, and sometimes XO if you happen to be in Holland Drive. Like parsley on chicken rice, it is a norm to find shallots wriggling in the soup, and that is the biggest blunder in the culinary art of fish soup noodles, to me.

I stop asking why, i just say dont. But sometimes these aunties and uncles forget.

However, loading shallots into any dish is an irreversible process. Being tiny, they infiltrate and permeate through the soup in a splt second, and the only way to salvage the damage done is to add loads of chilli and soya sauce in the ratio of 1:2 (shallots:chilli and soya sauce). But the overt saltiness and spiciness ruins the dish.

Yesterday I bought fish soup noodles and after ordering told the auntie twice not to add fried shallots. She shouted the order to auntie number two who cooked.

Auntie number two added shallots.

She realised her folly and tried to ladle the scums out.

I told her blank face, matter-of-factly that i do not take the soup floating with shallots and she has two options:

1. prepare a new bowl

2. refund my lunch monie $4

She took it hard. She raised her voice, fumbled over her words repeating stupidly ‘you dont take soups with shallots?’. Duh.

Very annoyingly she tried explaining to me (very rudely too) that she added fried shallots when making the soup base. Huh? This is news to me. The raw onions maybe, fried shallots? She is losing it…

As if it is an insult to her culinary skills, she returned the monie to me, which i took with glee.

after fishing out $4 from the cash register, she has calm down considerably and realised probably that I am just objecting to fried shallots and nothing else, and tried to pacify me saying onions are needed to balance the ‘fishiness’.

She doesnt get it, or refuse to understand. I have no problem with onions. I just dont like fried shallots.

She could have salvaged the situation by cooking a new bowl and still keep my business, and perhaps return business.

I am happy cos I had a fried shallot free lunch thereafter. More importantly I said no. I refuse to compromise and subject myself to a horrible lunch just because of someone else’s mistake.

All of us have quirks when it comes to food, i have only ONE. 

We need to launch a campaign for hawkers to start respecting customers when it comes to adding fried shallots.

Just dont add it as garnish lah…