You may not have heard of a Hawker centre before, but essentially they are large, open-air complexes with dedicated tables and chairs, and many different stalls with vendors (or “Hawkers”) selling a wide variety of different food. For an uninitiated westerner, think of these as food courts on steroids.
Hawker centres can be found throughout Southeast Asia, but are ubiquitous in Singapore. You can find centers throughout the city – some are smaller (5-10 different vendors) and others are enormous. For example, the Amoy Street Food Centre in Chinatown –
– has 2 full floors for dining, with nearly 300 individual vendors!
After our first day in Singapore we got most of our food from hawker centres. Not only because the meals were affordable (which they were, helping our backpacker budget in the expensive city), but also because of the wide variety and high quality everywhere we tried.
Some centres are named with official signs:
Sometimes you have to wait in a long line (usually a sign of popularity, so we did!) – other times not so much:
Without exception, all of the food is cooked to order right in front of you:
And the variety of food you can try is seemingly endless – we were struggling to sample as much as we could!
Hawker culture is something Singapore takes much pride in – so much so, in fact, that in 2020 it was designated an item of Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO. Far from the days of the 50’s and 60’s where the centre’s were seen as unhygienic venues for the less affluent, hawker centres are now known as some of the best places to eat in the world. As of 2019 more than 40 hawker stalls in Singapore are Michelin starred – Singapore is also the only country with any Michelin-starred food stalls to speak of.
Visiting as many hawker centres as you can is a must-do if you’re ever in Singapore. You can also commonly find these in Hong Kong or Malaysia – and as of September 2022 you can visit Urban Hawker in New York City, an authentic hawker centre concept brought to the states by none other than Anthony Bourdain.
Before we forget – this is some of the food we tried at Singapore’s hawker centres. Trust us, everything was delicious!
