Ming Chung Has Cooked White Lor Mee Since 1933. On Monday It Opens in ION Orchard.

Food Opera comes back on Monday, September 28, in the basement of ION Orchard, the glass mall that opened on Orchard Road in 2009. Food Republic, which has run the atrium there since the start, closed it for three months. The company said Thursday the new room holds 24 stalls, 18 of them new, about 20,000 square feet, dressed like old Orchard shopfronts. Six heritage brands are making their first food-hall stop. About 600 seats.

The oldest name on that list started on Weld Road in 1933.

Ho Ah Tong came from Putian, on the Fujian coast, and opened Ming Chung for Henghua rickshaw pullers living around Sungei Road. The house bowl is white lor mee, handmade wheat noodles braised in a pale stock with seafood and pork. People used to call it rickshaw noodles. Most visitors here meet the dark Hokkien lor mee first, the one stained with soy.

The Weld Road shophouse came down in 1988. The family has cooked on Maude Road since. A fourth-generation owner now carries the bowl into ION, for shoppers who will not make that walk.

Hillman Restaurant opened on Cantonment Road in 1963 as a Cantonese claypot house, and the paper-wrapped chicken later took a gold medal at the first Asian Salon Culinaire, a regional cooking contest, in 1978. The dining room moved to Kitchener Road in 2003. The ION counter is a branch.

Wah Eng Beef Noodles began as a Bain Street pushcart in 1948. Once the stall sat in Wah Hing Coffee Shop, across from the Odeon cinema, people called the Hainanese dry beef noodles Odeon beef noodles. 8days says the gravy later appeared in Shangri-La’s lobby lounge, and that Food Opera is the family’s first shop of its own.

First Street Fried Prawn Noodles is the wet Hokkien mee in the hall, from the family behind First Street Teochew Fish Soup. Yellow noodles and rice vermicelli sit in a prawn broth the stall says simmers more than six hours. A whole prawn sits on top. There is also a lala plate, the clam version, only at ION.

Derek Cheong, who won the second season of MasterChef Singapore, is bringing Berempah Bros in from Beauty World, the fried-chicken stall he runs with a partner. Hakka Bond Express is putting lei cha, the Hakka thunder-tea rice, and yong tau foo, stuffed tofu and vegetables, on the same floor. MP Thai arrives with a Michelin Bib Gourmand, the guide’s badge for good cooking at a friendly price. It has held that badge three years running.

Monday puts a few of the old bowls in a cooled basement on Orchard Road. Food Opera is at #B4-03/04, 2 Orchard Turn. Hours run 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.