Benjawan Phuangprasert wakes up at 1:30am on weekends to be ready to serve her earliest customers at the markets in Darwin.
Ubon, who is in charge of the cooking, has a laksa paste, prepared on Tuesdays, in the pot by 3:15am, soon followed by coconut milk and water. The laksa is on the boil shortly after.The team orders produce on a Monday, prepares sauces on Tuesdays, makes wontons on a Wednesday, picks up and wash vegetables on a Thursday and starts chopping them on a Friday."The laksa is definitely our most popular dish. We sell a lot, probably 300 bowls .
"From 4:30am to 5am, that's when we'll be about ready to serve, but our main customers will arrive around 8 to 9am," she says.Territorians travel in from bush blocks out of town to get their laksa on a weekend morning, while it's a staple for many shift workers and a favourite activity among tourists.
Alan Smith from Humpty Doo, about 40 kilometres out of Darwin, buys the first market laksa of the morning."Mary knows you by name, she knows what you want. She asks about my wife," he says.Mark Land, on his way home from a night shift at a gas plant, is ordering a few not long after.He says a weekly email goes around the office for a large order to eat at work for those working the day shift.
"We make sure that we weigh everything, all our ingredients are balanced, and we try to make it the same every single time," she says.She's still getting used to the around-the-clock hours of the market stallholder lifestyle, but is glad to be serving up food dear to peoples' hearts.