Pancakes_ Breakfast's comfort food
Breakfast in Singapore is something of a fluid concept: if a hawker or eating house is serving it in the morning, there's no reason it can't be breakfast, and no one will look twice if you get a big plate of prawns for your morning meal.
That said, there are some dishes eaten most commonly or exclusively for breakfast, served by certain hawkers and at kopitiams, the coffee houses as common in Singapore as Starbucks is in the U.S.
What can you expect for breakfast? Noodles, both stir fried and in broth, are common options. As are rice dishes like porridge and chwee kueh, steamed rice cakes topped with preserved salted radish. But the real national breakfast is a plate of pandan-scented kaya toast with some runny-yolked soft-cooked eggs topped with white pepper and dark soy sauce. If you're the type of person to spend your mornings dragging toast through pools of egg yolk, this is the thing for you.
Traditionally, breakfast is a sit-down thing—no Egg McMuffins to go, please—but a quick one. Your morning coffee is short and drunk quickly; eggs are sometimes slurped right from the dish.
Western influences are beginning to change that; chain kopitiams like Toast Box (an offshoot of the international bakery Bread Talk) sell coffee and breakfast to go. But if you have a few minutes to spare, sit down to enjoy your kaya toast or morning noodles. Mornings at hawker centers and kopitiams afford some of the best people watching in the country.
That said, there are some dishes eaten most commonly or exclusively for breakfast, served by certain hawkers and at kopitiams, the coffee houses as common in Singapore as Starbucks is in the U.S.
What can you expect for breakfast? Noodles, both stir fried and in broth, are common options. As are rice dishes like porridge and chwee kueh, steamed rice cakes topped with preserved salted radish. But the real national breakfast is a plate of pandan-scented kaya toast with some runny-yolked soft-cooked eggs topped with white pepper and dark soy sauce. If you're the type of person to spend your mornings dragging toast through pools of egg yolk, this is the thing for you.
Traditionally, breakfast is a sit-down thing—no Egg McMuffins to go, please—but a quick one. Your morning coffee is short and drunk quickly; eggs are sometimes slurped right from the dish.
Western influences are beginning to change that; chain kopitiams like Toast Box (an offshoot of the international bakery Bread Talk) sell coffee and breakfast to go. But if you have a few minutes to spare, sit down to enjoy your kaya toast or morning noodles. Mornings at hawker centers and kopitiams afford some of the best people watching in the country.