Singapore’s soul food at hawker centres reflects a colourful history

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I approached Singapore gingerly, knowing its seductive culinary charms and the departing gift of extra pounds.

It’s famous for its hawker centres (more than 120 of them), dense with incredibly inexpensive, delicious street-style foods, a pastiche of its historical influences and migrations from China, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and other countries, like Portugal and the Netherlands.

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Among the 13,000+ licensed hawker stalls in Singapore, two boast a Michelin star and 53 have Michelin Bib Gourmand status. Four years ago, UNESCO declared the hawker culture an intangible UNESCO cultural heritage. How could I not dive in?

Hours after landing at the impressive Changi Airport, we were in line at the Maxwell Hawker Centre stall Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice (Bib Gourmand). Chicken rice, created by immigrants from Hainan, China, and chili crab are considered Singapore’s national dishes, so emblematic of its melting pot.

We did have chili crab during our visit, but I found the effort, the mess, the stains on my clothing and wrangling with the shelled crabs, not quite worth it although my husband patiently worked his way through most of it.

At Maxwell Hawker Centre, with scores of hawkers, signs instructed me to clear the table after eating to avoid a fine: “Enforcement action will be taken. Keep your table clean for the next diner.” I actually found Singapore’s orderliness refreshing in light of more disorderly behaviours back home.

These hawker centres are regulated by health authorities. After all, public health is exactly why flocks of free-ranging hawkers were chased off the streets starting in the late 1960s and made to acquire permits and operate in centralized locations.

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After initially cat-and-mousing on the streets and back alleys, vendors bought into the custom-built facilities with perks like running water, toilets, electricity, waste disposal, centralized dishwashing services, and even subsidies for automating kitchens and apprenticing new hawkers. They’ve have become community centres where some 80 per cent of Singaporeans go at least once a week for super affordable food.

The following day we headed to Hill Street Tai Hwa Eating House for pork noodles, a tiny stall with a Michelin star. Gasp! We waited in line for over an hour for bowls of pork noodles that didn’t impress us much. They cost only $8 to $15, depending on the toppings, but I thought, for a few more dollars, any noodle dish at Fat Mao Noodles in Vancouver is far superior in every way. So yeah — a Michelin star? Gasp!

For insider insight, we joined a food culture tour conducted by Hello Singapore Tours that covered four neighbourhoods over six hours, by foot and transit (gotta love Singapore’s transit system!) with many stops at hawker centres. We began with a breakfast of curry puffs and kaya toast.

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I skipped the coffee (kopi) laden with condensed milk and sugar, a morning staple for locals. The kaya toast with coconut jam is typically eaten with soft boiled eggs and a soy pepper sauce to dip the toast in. The flaky, crispy curry puffs, made daily by a third generation of family operators, were filled with chicken, potato, egg, onion and a ‘special gravy’. It was first rate.

Our guide, Pamela, explained that coconut jam for the kaya toast was an invention of Chinese workers who, employed in European households, discovered strawberry jam, wanted it, but couldn’t afford the berries. So they made coconut jam instead.

We walked through the colourful Katong district, historically a Peranakan neighbourhood of Chinese men who married local Malay women (nonyas). We stopped at a third-generation shop with nonya food; the founding matriarch had started out selling a glutinous rice mixture wrapped in bamboo leaf under a banyan tree.

We also tried the rice and glutinous rice confections (kuehs) sold at the shop — a layered rice cake and coconut sticky balls with a crunch of palm sugar in the centre.

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At the Old Airport Road hawker centre, Pamela taught us how to be a local and reserve seats at a table by putting an umbrella or pack of tissues while you go off to order food. It’s totally honoured. In Singlish — or Singaporean slang — it’s how you ‘chope’ a seat. Other handy Singlish words while eating out are ‘shiok’ (delicious), or ‘die, die, must try’ (you just have to eat this).

And why would diners have a pack of tissues on hand? We soon learned, both in Singapore and in Indonesia, where we travelled next, that napkins, if available at all, are the size of a single toilet tissue, hardly enough for a dab. When my husband asked for a paper napkin at the Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice stall, the owner vigorously shook her finger at him and gave a firm “No!” (This was the exception. Generally, people in both Singapore and Indonesia are super warm and friendly.)

Once we choped our seats at the Old Airport Road hawker centre, we followed Pamela to several stalls and returned to our table with delicious laksa, popiah (Peranakan spring rolls), Hokkien prawn noodles, and carrot cake. The latter is not your mom’s carrot cake. Made with steamed daikon and egg cake, it’s named, perhaps from a mash-up of its Chinese name, chai tow kway. With added soy sauce, it’s called black carrot cake.

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The ‘Michael Jackson’ on hawker menus sounded intriguing. Turns out it’s soy milk with black grass jelly cubes named for his song Black or White (“If you’re thinkin’ of being my baby/It don’t matter if you’re black or white/I said if you’re thinkin’ of being my brother/It don’t matter if you’re black or white”).

At yet another stop, we had gado gado, an Indonesian dish, with tempeh, eggs, potatoes, rice, beans, and prawns. It was drenched, overly so, I thought, in a spicy peanut sauce but topped with light as feather crackers that Indonesians do so well. (Travelling in Indonesia, we constantly marvelled at their cracker skills, once joining a mother and daughter pound some nuts flat. They’d dry them, then frying them into the lightest, most delicious crackers.)

Pamela then took us for masala tea with spices and condensed milk. The chaiwala demonstrated his tea ‘pulling’ skill, pouring the mixture back and forth between two far-apart pots for a ‘smooth mix.’ He served the masala chai in a plastic bag with a straw. “This is the way it was sold to workers in rubber plantations,” Pamela explained. “They couldn’t afford whole tea leaves so they ground broken ones into dust and added spices to make masala tea. Nowadays, cab drivers hang the bags on their mirrors when they’re driving.”

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On Haji Lane, a narrow street in an Arab neighbourhood thick with shops, we tucked into a platter-sized murtabak, a stuffed paratha-like bread, common in Arab and South Asian countries. This one was filled with mutton, onions, eggs and served with fish curry sauce. The tour group gobbled it up, never mind our rounded, full tummies after hours of eating.

On our last stop, another biggie — a two-foot dosa. But it was delicate and light, with coconut, tomato, and sambal chutney dips and mango lassi for a cleansing finish.

Pamela pointed out that on Sundays, the Little India neighbourhood we were in becomes a hive of immigrants and migrant workers as they gather and eat and shop on their one day off.

We also visited some higher-end restaurants during our three days in Singapore and one of note is National Kitchen, in the grand National Gallery. It’s a treasury of Peranakan food, run by Violet Oon, dubbed the Julia Child of Singapore.

I loved the kueh pie tee, a ‘top hat’ shaped tart filled with bamboo shoots, turnip poached in prawn bisque, prawns, chili sauce and a sweet fruit sauce. And even more, the beef rendang, which blows beef bourguignon out of the water. I pursued and relished beef rendang later, while later travelling in its country of origin, Indonesia.

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Damage to my waist line was minimal, thanks to endless walking and cycling.

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