The Best Of Singapore Street Food: A Hawker Centre Tour

AFAR

See a full list of AFAR's recommendations for hawker centres to visit, best stalls, and what to order: https://rebrand.ly/cbi8e72  The stalls we visited in this video include: Tiong Bahru Market Wanton Mee @ Zhōng Yú Yuán Wèi Wanton Mee Chwee Kueh @ Jian Bo Shih Kueh  Amoy Street Food Centre Fried Kway Teow @ Amoy Street Fried Kway Teow  Maxwell Food Centre Chicken Rice @ Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice Sugarcane juice  Dan Tat (Egg tarts) at Tong Heng  ---- CONNECT WITH AFAR Afar.com is a digital and print magazine that publishes travel tips, guides, news, and stories: https://www.afar.com  Get updates on the latest articles, travel news, and more from AFAR by signing up for the AFAR newsletter: https://afar.com/newsletters  Follow AFAR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AfarMedia Follow AFAR on Twitter: https://twitter.com/afarmedia Follow AFAR on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afarmedia Follow AFAR on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/afarmedia  --- 0:00 - Arriving in Singapore 1:40 - Tiong Bahru Market 2:35 - Amoy Street Food Centre 3:17 - Maxwell Food Centre 4:19 - Dessert @ Tong Heng  #singapore #singaporefood

Transcript

00:00 Hi there, this is Jessie Beck from the travel magazine and media brand, Afar.

00:04 I've recently just gotten back from a trip to Singapore.

00:07 Now, Singapore is an amazing travel destination for so many reasons.

00:11 It has some incredible architecture, nature, sometimes right in the same building, shopping,

00:16 museums, as well as several of the best bars in the world.

00:19 However, there is one thing I was most excited to discover while I was there.

00:23 It's food.

00:24 [music]

00:29 After a very, very long flight from San Francisco to Chinggi Airport, which by the way, is definitely

00:35 worth spending some time in, I joined one of my coworkers, Ellie C, who lives in and

00:40 grew up in Singapore, to check out some of its famed street food and hawker centers.

00:45 In Singapore, you rarely find food vendors on the streets.

00:48 Instead, they're located in designated areas called hawker centers.

00:53 There are over a hundred of these open-air food courts, which offer a wide variety of

00:57 cuisines from Chinese and Indian to Malay, Indonesian, as well as some distinctly Singaporean

01:02 creations that have come out of the country's multicultural makeup, all being cooked side

01:07 by side in adjacent stalls.

01:09 Hawker centers are so distinctive that they were added to UNESCO's representative list

01:13 of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity in 2020.

01:18 Most hawker centers have sporadic opening hours and close up shop once they've sold

01:22 out of food for the day, so we headed out at lunchtime to avoid being disappointed.

01:27 And while you can find a variety of foods throughout Singapore's hawker centers, we

01:30 mostly focused on a handful of dishes from Singapore's Chinese community, since we

01:34 were in and around the city's Chinatown neighborhood.

01:38 For our first stop, I met Ellie at Tiong Bahru Market in a neighborhood by the same

01:42 name.

01:43 One of the dishes we're trying is Zhong Rui Yun Wei's wonton mee, an egg noodle dish

01:48 usually garnished with a barbeque pork known as char siu in wontons, either fried or in

01:53 a clear soup.

01:55 It is also usually served with leafy vegetables.

01:57 So what do we have here?

02:00 Okay, so this is wonton mee, and it's basically an egg noodle dish with leafy vegetables,

02:07 barbeque pork, and usually either fried or soup dumplings.

02:11 Actually both of these are my childhood favorites, they're very much my go-to, like really easy

02:18 to eat foods.

02:20 While there, we also had to grab a plate of jikwe from Jianbo Jikwe.

02:25 Jikwe is a steamed rice cake topped with preserved radish.

02:28 Originally a diu chu dish, it is commonly eaten for breakfast.

02:33 For our second stop, we headed over to Chinatown for a stop at Amoy Street Food Centre, which

02:38 was pretty busy with workers from the nearby offices getting lunch when we arrived.

02:42 Yep, and we're here specifically looking for the Amoy Street Fried Gui Diao stall to

02:47 try that jia gui diao, which is a stir-fried rice noodle dish topped with a variety of

02:52 ingredients from prawns, cockles, to Chinese sausage and bean sprouts.

02:57 I know those noodles weren't the most attractive, but they were so good.

03:01 They're really flavorful, had a great texture, and the lime really added a nice brightness

03:05 to it all.

03:06 However, we were feeling pretty full at the end of this, and we still had one last stop.

03:13 Okay, so we're now at our second Chinatown hawker centre, Maxwell Food Centre, which

03:17 is home to the world-famous Tian Tian Hainese Chicken Rice.

03:23 And some refreshing sugar cane juice, which was being sold from a stall opposite.

03:27 The famous chicken rice.

03:28 The famous, famous chicken rice.

03:29 The end of our food journey for today.

03:30 I don't think I can eat much more.

03:31 I'm so full.

03:32 I'm really excited.

03:39 I could smell it when they were ladling it into the bowl.

03:50 Yeah, I got so excited.

03:51 And chicken rice.

03:52 Chicken rice.

03:53 And essential, especially on a hot day like this.

03:54 That chicken rice was definitely one of my favourite dishes that we tried that day.

04:07 The flavours are so simple, but it's just so savoury and homey and satisfying.

04:13 I especially love how they use chicken fat in the rice to give it that extra flavour.

04:17 Okay, so we couldn't rightfully end our food tour before stopping for some dessert, right?

04:22 Fortunately, from Maxwell Food Centre, we were super close to Tong Heng, a bakery selling

04:27 traditional Cantonese pastries that I've gone to my whole life.

04:31 My family really loves their dan tai, which are these custard-filled egg tarts.

04:36 In a single afternoon, we were only able to scratch the surface of all the amazing dishes

04:41 you can find in Singapore's hawker centres.

04:43 We didn't even begin to start exploring all the wonderful Indian, Malay or Singaporean

04:47 dishes common throughout the city.

04:49 If you make it here, we definitely recommend exploring as many hawker centres as you have

04:53 time and appetite for.

04:54 And if you're not sure where to go, we'll link below to our guide to Singapore's hawker

04:58 centres and the best dishes to try in each of them.

05:01 If you like this video, please remember to subscribe and hit that like button on your

05:04 way out.

05:05 Thanks for watching!

05:08 [Music]

05:09 [Music]

05:13 [Music]

05:16 [Music]

05:19 [Music]

05:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Category

Transcript

Recommended