Singapore For Foodies

Eating is a serious business in Singapore. It is not for nothing that the mantra here is ‘do not waste your calories’, in other words: if you eat something, it must be tasty. What do you need to know as foodie before you visit the city state?

Singaporeans are quietly an hour in the queue for lunch

Throughout the city you will find hawker centers, a covered collection of food stalls where you can get dishes from all over Asia (plus ‘authentic European food’). No idea which stall to choose? Simply connect in the longest row: Singaporeans find it perfectly normal to wait an hour for the perfect chicken rice from that one stall, while there are three other stalls that sell the same dish that does not have a row. But whatever stall you choose, the food is never bad. The Singapore government also places high demands on food safety, so you do not have to worry about getting sick.

A nice hawker center where you sit among the locals can be found on Maxwell Road in Chinatown. If you’re new in Singaport, this is place where to eat in singapore. Here you will find the longest row always for Tian Tian, ​​seller of the national comfort food chicken rice. Until the cook was fired after a fight and he started his own shop four stalls away, Ah Tian, the row moved with him.

You can assemble your lunch or dinner with different stalls and then eat at one of the many tables for general use. If it is busy, you will occupy a seat before you stand in line by placing a packet of handkerchiefs or similar on the table.

You do not have eateries in Singapore

In Singapore you go out to eat or drink. You will not encounter a combination of the two eateries. Want cheap and fast, then you go to a hawker center, you have more to spend and you want to make an evening of it, then you go to a restaurant. But there is a third option that comes closest to a bistro: the food courts in the many shopping centers that Singapore has.

In fact, the food courts (you usually find them in the basement) are a whole collection of eateries together. Each has its own seating area, a reasonably extensive menu including alcoholic drinks and the prices are similar to what you would pay in an American eatery. In addition, there are also things in the food court where you can get food to go, but these are mostly ice creams and smoothies or sweets for the home, because eating on the street, a Singaporean does not.

The Singaporean also likes to read about food

If you dive into a bookstore in Singapore, you will encounter a remarkably large number of books about food. Cookbooks of course, but also treatises about where your food comes from, reflections about wine and travel stories about restaurants. It may be wise to note the titles for home, because they are mostly English and American books that you can order in the America. Books are expensive in Singapore. What brings us to the last point:

Living like a foodie is not cheap in Singapore

That is not entirely true: if you limit yourself to the hawker centers you can eat very cheap. For 3 or 4 dollars you have a lunch or dinner there. But otherwise Singapore is not set to people who have little to spend: for a piece of chocolate cake in a trendy cake shop I paid 11 dollars. It was very nice cake, then again. For a juice you pay 4 dollars, for a glass of house wine 8 dollars or more. But, and that is the difference with other cities where you pay the main prize: you get value for money in Singapore. It is not for nothing that they say ‘do not waste your calories’ here: if you eat something, it should also be delicious.