Hawker Fare and Culture

If you are in Singapore and have not planned to visit a hawker centre, my personal recommendation is to visit at least one for your meals. It allows for access to various local fares at a very reasonable price and the best part, the more people you eat with allows you to try a suite of different local fare in a single meal. Although there are many different types of hawker fare, these are some (non-exhaustive list) of the more popular ones:

1. Chicken Rice – as basic as it sounds, this savoury dish served with rice and chili is not to be missed. It is aromatic and every grain of rice is soaked in that flavour. Definitely a dish to try.

2. Nasi Lemak – A malay dish that has coconut rice, fried chicken, fried egg and ikan bilis (fried anchovies). It is flavourful and should be eaten with the sambal chilli – not the healthiest dish but very worth it in my opinion.

3. Laksa – Rice noodles served with a curry-like broth. The broth is packed with flavour and is typically served with fishcakes and shrimp. Although it looks spicy, it is actually pretty mild with the coconut milk added.

These are my top 3 dishes (biased!), of course there are many more such as roast pork / charsiew rice, curry chicken noodle, rojak, hokkien mee, lor mee, bar chor mee, mee siam, prata, chilli crab (for the more expensive type dish) and the list just goes on and on but I would say all of them have a different unique flavour and you should try everything if you have the chance :P

The best part of the hawker centre is that you do not need to eat local fare (if you don’t like it), most of them serve a variety of other cuisines like dim sum, western food, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese and others. So if you ever get tired (which I hope you don’t), then theres always those options.