I have a confession to make. I am proud to announce that I have been recently inducted into Gang 398, joining the ranks of those who have patronised what could possibly be the oldest canteen left in Singapore - Canteen 398.
This historic kopitiam (coffee shop) looks like a relic from the Singapore 70s, when Singapore still houses a number of ‘kampungs’ (rural villages). It is one of the few rare ‘kampung’ coffee shops of its kind in Singapore.
Named after its address; 398 Piccadilly Road, it is located near the Seletar Army Camp. The address itself is a throwback to days now long forgotten when the area was part of the Royal Air Force’s RAF Seletar. In this age of urban Singapore, this is a rare sight that not many have seen, especially for the younger generations.
Canteen 398 owner, William, is in his early 70s. He had been operating out of this shack since the late 1960s. He now runs the canteen together with his wife and sister-in-law. In its early days, it served drinks & food and snack bites to British army personnel and, later, to the Singapore Armed Forces personnel. Now, it serves workers from the nearby Seletar Aerospace Park.
Check out it’s outdoor seating where you can be drinking kopi (traditional local coffee) under the shades of trees. A innocuous sign on the lamp post points towards the canteen.
The exterior of Canteen 398 is cladded in zinc sheets that has browned over time with rust. Vegetable and flower plots surround the premise lending to the nostalgia in the air. The name of the place used to be written big and bold across the front of the metallic wall, in graffiti-styled. Alas that is no longer to be seen. Nearby it is a magnificent Bodhi fig tree with a shrine below.
Step inside Canteen 398 and you will feel like you have just been transported back in time. The interior looks like something straight out of the early 1990s when solid wooden top table and red stackable chairs are still widely used in coffeeshops.
The old school mosaic tiles flooring and the unpolished wall & ceiling look, stands as a testament to its age. While exposed cable trunking and dangling cable is a big taboo for interior design nowadays, the canteen serves as a reminder that such minor details do not matter back in those simpler days. Whisk out your phone camera and someone will gently point you to a sign that says photography is prohibited inside the canteen.
Inside the canteen is a Malay stall selling ‘Nasi Padang’ which has been around for 20 years and a Chinese stall selling ‘Chap Chye Peng’ which has been around for 10 years. The Malay stall sells good ‘nasi padang’, evidenced by the long lunch time queue that starts to form just after 12 pm.
Seletar has changed drastically over the years as the authorities cleared the old RAF airbase & colonial architecture and transformed the space into an aerospace hub. Despite these intense transformation, it is things like Canteen 398 that reminds you of how Seletar used to be before. This relic of the past has been sitting on the chopping board for development since 2012 and no one knows how long more it will remain.
So if you are nearby in the Seletar area, do drop by to see it for yourself before it too vanishes into the history of Singapore.
Image Credit: Mothership.sg
