This is a morning meal that us Singaporeans know very well.
It is a meal that has in recent years transformed from a 'regular' 'normal' breakfast of the heartlands into one of national and cultural identity.
Where once it was not sought after by tourists visiting our shores, today you can find them going around malls hunting for a TOASTBOX or a WANGZ or a YA KUN or just about any place that serves up kaya toast, soft boiled eggs and coffee or tea.
They're very conscientious about it too.
I see them looking over at the locals for the best way to eat the eggs.
I see them taking pictures with the toast dipped inside the eggs.
And I see them debating over iced milk coffee or iced lemon tea whilst waiting for their turn in the queue.
This breakfast has become something our little island can be proud of.
Should it not be when this is a meal that we can find in nearly every coffee shop, nearly every hawker center, and nearly every food court?
There might be places where you can find one dish or the other.
But there is no coffee shop that does not serve a (varying quality) of kaya toast, French toast, toast with butter and sugar, toast with kaya no butter, soft boiled eggs and coffee or tea.
There is no best one.
You just have to find one that suits your palate.
There are coffee shops whose eggs are more chewy than runny (I love those), or whose eggs can be so raw I have to ask the grump-faced uncle nicely if he can boil them a bit more again.
There are coffee shops whose bread is not very toasted and which comes to the table flat and limp and odd-shaped with just a scanty bit of butter and even lesser of the kaya spread.
Then there are coffee shops whose (oh dear me) coffee is so watery I have to order kopi gao just so I can get through the day feeling like I did have my morning coffee.
But no matter which coffee shop, hawker center or food court you go to, no matter what the standards of each place are, a breakfast like this never fails to deliver.
I've had this meal at a food court in Plaza By The Park before heading off for a three-hour exam paper.
I've had this meal at a coffee shop in Bedok Central because I was there on an errand and didn't want to waste time looking around for other options.
I've had this meal at a few YA KUNs before stepping into the courtrooms of the State Court and the High Court.
And at one time, I even had this meal (nearly every morning) at the staff canteen of the then-Singapore Power Building before going off to my part-time job a twenty-minute walk down the road.
She's simple, yes, this combination of bread and eggs, but always, always, she has been, through the years, a warm, comforting, confident boost that gets me through the rest of the day.