Best Hawker Center food in Singapore: our experience with Singapore’s street food

As I mention in my main post about Singapore, the unity of the city revolts around food, and this is nowhere clearer than in hawker centers. Hawker centers are food courts where hundreds of street food vendors cook and sell their signature dishes in rows of stalls around public tables. People line up to buy their favourite food (at very low prices) and eat together at the tables. Chinese, Malay, Indian and Indonesian cuisine (among others) – hundreds of different delicious dishes waiting for you IN THE SAME PLACE? Let’s discover the best hawker center food in Singapore in this post!

Since this is too big a topic to summarize in one single post, I’ll give a brief overview of each of the Hawker Centers and link to their dedicated post where I go into details into my favourite stalls and food!

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A little intro to Hawker Center food in Singapore

The creation of the hawker centers was a way for the city to control the sanitary standards of street food (and low-key to clean up the ugly looking stalls from the beautiful new streets of modern Singapore). In any case, they brought them together in these courts that have become the main attraction of the city, and almost double as civic centres for the neighbourhoods. I was actually quite surprised to see very few – or even no – tourists in some of the centers, so take advantage of that now.

As of the time of writing, there are 110 hawker centers in Singapore, each with hundreds of stalls, so I obviously did not have time to try them all – yet, and not for lack of trying -. In this post, I will share my experience and recommendations for some the best hawker center food in Singapore. This will be an active post, and I will continue adding entries every time I visit Singapore. Here we go (in no particular order):

Best Hawker Center food in Singapore

1. Maxwell Food Center

Maxwell Food Center is one of the most famous hawker centers in Singapore. It is located in Chinatown and it is on the smaller scale compare to other centers in the quarter. However, that doesn’t mean it is not filled with delicious options to satisfy your street food cravings, and Singaporeans know that. That is why this small hawker center always seems to be busy. Some hawker centers seem to be somewhat themed, and Maxwell Center is one of the best places to try Hainainese chicken rice.

2. Chinatown Complex

Chinatown Complex is one of the biggest and most diverse hawker centers in Singapore (and one of my favourites!). In fact, it is the largest food center in the city with 260 stalls. This makes choosing the goodies to taste all the more difficult. That being said, in Chinatown Complex you should focus on getting your Chinese and Peranakan treats. This includes dumplings, roasted meats, popiah or claypot rice. If the name didn’t give it away, it is also located in Chinatown.

3. People’s Park Food Center

People’s Park is another one of the iconic Chinatown Food Centers. It is therefore unsurprisingly associated with Chinese cuisine. In People’s Park Food Center you can check some less common hawker center food in Singapore, such as Ma La Xiang Guo. You can include some dumplings, yong tau foo and roast meats.

4. Newton Food Center

You knew this one was coming. Newton Food Center became internationally famous because of its feature in the hit film Crazy Rich Asians. Regardless of its cinematic fame, Newton Food Center is a fantastic place to try out some of the best hawker center food in Singapore, particularly when you’re in the mood for barbecue and seafood. Newton Food Center is home to one of the highest densities of BBQ joints, featuring delicious snacks like satay or more upscale seafood BBQ.

5. Old Airport Road Food Center

Old Airport Road Food Center was one of the first hawker centers I visited in Singapore because I was staying in Geylang, but also one of my favourites because it has retained its authenticity, probably because it further away from tourist areas. It has less of a theme than other hawker centers, but it seems to have a bit of a noodle competition going on, so it’s the perfect place to try some mee, kway teow or hor fun.

6. Tekka Center

Tekka Center is the hawker center in Little India and, as such, its main focus is on Indian food, even though they offer many more options. Although all hawker centers look more or less alike, you can sense the Indian feeling to this one, being a bit more loud and chaotic, and the smell of spices and heat of steams really feel the air. Tekka Center is the perfect place to taste some curries, biryanis and other Indian delights.

7. Amoy Food Center

Amoy Food Center is located in CBD, and it has quite a different feel to other hawker centers in this list. While Maxwell, People’s Park and Chinatown Complex are vibrant in a loud, festive way, Amoy Food Center is much quieter, even when its full. That is because it is mostly aimed at business people that work in the surrounding offices, but the food is still delicious! However, this means you should aim to visit Amoy Food Center at lunchtime (ideally before to not coincide with every single working person in the area). If there is a food theme in this hawker center I did not pick it up, but let me know in the comments below! In any case, at Amoy go for curry puffs, some delicious noodles and a nice cup of coffe.

8. Bonus: Lau Pa Sat and Satay by the Bay

Now let’s get touristy. There are literally dozens of hawker centers in Singapore that can blow your mind with delicious street food at incredible prices. There are other hawker centers that are incredibly beautiful or located in incredibly beautiful locations. Unfortunately, not always the two features coexist. That doesn’t mean that the second kind of hawker centers are not worth a visit and that you cannot enjoy a meal there. That is the case of both Lau Pa Sat and Satay by the Bay.

Lau Pa Sat

Lau Pa Sat is one of the most famous hawker centers in Singapore located in a beautiful cast iron structure heritage site wet market structure. In fact, Lau Pa Sat means old market in the Hokkien dialect. The building is gorgeous and it is rightfully filled with visitors from all over the world. Unfortunately, this comes with a decrease in the quality of the food and an increase in prices. Nevertheless, it is still worth visiting, especially since it is very centrally located.

Satay by the Bay

The case of Satay by the Bay is actually quite opposite than that of Lau Pa Sat, but at the same time quite similar. Satay by the Bay started operating very recently in 2013 and, while not located in an old beautiful market like Lau Pa Sat, it is located in a new beautiful garden (Gardens by the Bay), probably Singapore’s most visited attraction. This means that Satay by the Bay is strongly targeted towards tourists, with subpar food quality, fewer and less interesting options and high prices. That being said, it comes quite handy when visiting the gardens, especially for a pitstop with a fruit shake.

Where to stay in Singapore

Singapore is an expensive city for the standards of Southeast Asia, so you may need a little extra planning when choosing your accommodation if you’re on a budget. However, you can find all kinds of accommodations in the city, so choose depending on your main interests based on the area. Check out this post where I give you recommendations based on the type of trip you’re looking for and the areas in Singapore:

→ Where to stay in Singapore

Or you can use the map below to find where to stay:

Booking.com

Closing statement

Trying new food while traveling is probably one of the things that brings me the most joy in my life and Singapore and its hawker centers make it all the easier for me! The fact that you can taste not only many different dishes of a culture but of many cultures that are intertwined in the making of this city state in a single place is the most convenient thing. While I summarized a few of the hawker centers that I visited in this post, make sure you have a look to the dedicated recommendations that I have for each of them by clicking on their names or just following the links in this

Maxwell Food Center

Chinatown Complex

People’s Park Food Center

Newton Food Center

Airport Road Food Center

Tekka Center

Amoy Food Center

And remember, this is only what one man could manage to taste in a couple visits to the city, but by no means it is an exhaustive guide in terms of dishes or even hawker centers, so explore and go with your gut (quite literally!).

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