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The Singaporean 'hawker aunty' whose bak chor mee made it to Auckland’s Iconic Eats list
Adlena Wong moved her family to Auckland, New Zealand, on a leap of faith and built a food business from scratch. Now her Muslim-friendly bak chor mee is officially "iconic" in the city.
Adlena Wong founded Super Shiok Eats in Auckland, New Zealand, where she sells bak chor mee at farmers markets and developed a take-home kit for the Singaporean dish. (Photos: Adlena Wong; Art: CNA/Jasper Loh)
Simone Wu
15 May 2026 07:24AMWhen the 2026 Iconic Auckland Eats List was announced on May 5, one of the dishes recognised was bak chor mee – the vinegary, savoury minced meat noodle dish more commonly associated with hawker centres in Singapore than with New Zealand.
The annual list is a selection of 100 beloved, locally nominated dishes – ranging from fine dining to cafe fare – that define Auckland’s unique culinary culture.
Behind the bak chor mee win is Adlena Wong, the Singaporean founder of Super Shiok Eats. The 43-year-old has spent the past six years steadily staking Singapore’s claim on New Zealand’s dining landscape.
For Wong, the recognition is gratifying not just because customers had nominated her dish, but because it affirmed a bet she had made on an unlikely underdog.
“Receiving the good news felt like such a great acknowledgement,” she said. “My choice to double down and focus on bak chor mee was a wise move.”
For a mid-career professional who gave up a stable life in Singapore to start over in a country where few knew what bak chor mee was, the recognition is more than a culinary accolade. It is confirmation that the pivot had been worth it.
FROM JURONG EAST WET MARKET TO AUCKLAND MARKETS
In primary school, Wong trailed her Nyonya grandmother around a Jurong East wet market, learning to pick fish and bargain. Back home, the matriarch of a three-generation household would chase her out of the kitchen, making her even more determined to find her way back in.
She learnt to cook by watching the older women in the family. As a university student, she tried to persuade her mother to open a nasi padang stall. After she got married, she often threw dinner parties at her place, cooking pasta, steak and roast meats. She even considered becoming a private chef.
Instead, she found work in public relations and communications, including running her own agency Platform Public Relations, before moving to New Zealand in 2018.
She and her husband wanted a different life experience, and as native English speakers, they assumed finding work would not be too difficult. They were wrong.
In Christchurch, while her husband spent months sending out CVs, Wong was navigating a new country with an 18-month-old and a three-year-old in tow.
They had arrived in the dead of winter, staying in a poorly insulated flat where the utility bills nearly matched the rent. But sitting still did not come naturally to someone who had always worked. “Who was I kidding trying to be a tai tai wannabe?” she laughed.
So, she took on odd jobs to keep busy and earn some pocket money – paper runs, caring for babies at a daycare, working as a teacher aide at her firstborn’s school.
The excitement of being somewhere new and knowing that her two young children were relying on her gave her purpose in the hardest months.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” she said. “At most we’d go back to Singapore, and at least we tried.” Her husband eventually found a job after five months.
COOKING HER WAY TO A BUSINESS
Then came the pandemic in March 2020. With jobs being scarce and movement restricted, Wong turned to food.
She launched Super Shiok Eats, taking orders on her Facebook page and leaving the food on her doorstep for pickup. Nasi lemak with fried chicken wings was the first dish, sold to a customer whose advice she still remembers: “Lose the bones. Kiwis don’t like meat with bones.”
She later introduced more niche foods, such as chwee kueh, fried carrot cake and bak chor mee. When restrictions eased, she expanded into catering, cooking from her home kitchen.
As the city re-opened, Wong moved into farmers markets. Gradually, she focused: bak chor mee, fried carrot cake, Nyonya laksa, mee rebus, mee siam and economical bee hoon. The top three sellers at her pop-ups turned out to be bak chor mee, mee rebus, and fried carrot cake – dishes that, she noted, almost nobody else in Auckland offered.
Her most high-profile engagement came in October 2025, when she catered a reception welcoming Prime Minister Lawrence Wong to Auckland. She served nasi lemak in a cup and jemput-jemput, the Malay banana fritters whose name means “welcome” – a detail that was not accidental, she said.
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MUSLIM-FRIENDLY BAK CHOR MEE
Wong could have centred on more globally recognised dishes, such as laksa or satay. Instead, she chose bak chor mee, a dish traditionally built around minced pork and lard.“Satay and laksa are already well-known, but they’re also contestable as uniquely Singaporean food,” she said. “Bak chor mee is different – it’s somewhat of an underdog.”
There is also a personal irony: Wong is of mixed heritage, with a Malay-Muslim mother and a Chinese father who converted to Islam before marriage.
Traditional pork-based bak chor mee was not something she grew up eating. Her closest early encounters were halal fishball mee pok.
Later, as halal-certified food courts and brands such as Banquet (now known as Cantine) and Encik Tan made more dishes accessible, she was finally able to try dishes she had long watched her Chinese friends enjoy.
“What’s personal is not the dish per se but being able to identify and connect with my Chinese-Hokkien side,” she said.
When she began developing her own bak chor mee recipe in Singapore, using minced chicken, she tested it on friends and family, iterating until it was as close as memory and halal constraints allowed.
In New Zealand, however, while the vinegar tang was not difficult to replicate, she had to let go of her anxiety about authenticity – not least because the ingredients available there would never be identical to those back home.
“I struggle with how subjective authenticity could be. I’d prefer to think of my food as a signpost or reminder of someone’s time in Singapore, rather than trying to be the most authentic version.”
Her bak chor mee kit – launched in 2024 after two years of prototyping and sold for NZ$16 (S$12) – is the logical extension of this philosophy: a way to reach people beyond pop-up markets.
Wong’s bak chor mee kit is a Muslim-friendly version of the pork-based dish popular in Singapore. (Photo: Adlena Wong)
It was a practical decision. Auckland is geographically spread out, and reaching customers solely through markets is time-consuming and physically demanding. A packaged product allows her to reach Christchurch, Queenstown, and, she hopes, eventually the wider Singaporean diaspora.
Her dream? To sell the kits in Singapore one day. “That would be a great homecoming,” she said.
LIFE AT THE FARMERS MARKETS
Running a pop-up is gruelling, she said – sourcing ingredients, transporting equipment, setting up, cooking hawker-style under a tent, and then tearing down at the end of the day. The farmers markets are spread across Auckland, some 30 to 45 minutes from her home.At these weekend pop-ups, which she does every fortnight or so, she is at the mercy of the weather and crowd. Yet, she enjoys the unpredictability.
She once secured a coveted spot at a popular local market, only to find that the 7am start time and 1pm closing were entirely misaligned with the Singaporean habit of eating rice and noodles for breakfast. She went home with leftovers.
Her customers are predominantly Southeast Asians, alongside Pakeha Kiwis (New Zealanders of European descent), and locally born Asians who have worked in Singapore or have family ties there.
One encounter convinced her that bak chor mee had real potential beyond her Asian customers: a Pakeha Kiwi customer ordered a few bowls, finished them, then came back to buy take-home kits.
What sustains her, beyond the cooking itself, is the connection to fellow Singaporeans, the Southeast Asian community in Auckland, and locals who have become regulars. Breaking into Kiwi social circles, she noted candidly, is not easy for migrants. “The connections I’ve been able to make, I owe to Super Shiok Eats,” she said.
REINVENTION AS A WAY OF LIFE
While her bak chor mee kits gain traction, Wong is finishing a master’s degree in communications and media studies at the Auckland University of Technology and eyeing a graduate diploma in education. She also works part-time in communications.She treats her “hawker aunty” persona not as a fallback, but as one pillar in a diversified professional life.
The goal, eventually, is full autonomy – no employer, multiple ventures, time spent with the people who matter. “I hope I am demonstrating grit and adaptability to my children – skills that are crucial in an unpredictable and volatile world,” she said.
Her older daughter, now 12, has already started helping at markets, taking orders and holding her own with customers.
Asked what she hopes her daughters absorb from watching all of this, she does not hesitate. “Life’s always a struggle, whether in Singapore or New Zealand – and the struggle is what makes life beautiful, well-lived and stories interesting,” she said.
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