Some Popular Dishes at Singapore Hawker Centres

 Chicken Rice:

Chicken rice is an eternally popular fare, especially among local diners. Prepared either “white” (poached) or “black” (roasted or braised), the dish is typically served with rice, chilli, and ginger.

Nasi Lemak:

Nasi lemak is a classic Malay dish that simply consists of coconut rice or rice cooked in coconut cream and wrapped in pandan leaves. It’s usually served as part of a set meal with fried egg, fried anchovies, cucumbers, and chilli paste.

Bak Kut Teh:

One Singaporean food that many locals reach for comfort and warmth is bak kut teh, which is basically pork bone soup. It’s a very simple dish with the most popular hawker versions featuring peppery broth and succulent pork rib meat.

Roti Prata:

A popular dish in many countries, roti prata is a flat bread that’s light, crisp, and flaky on the outside and soft, warm, and chewy inside. Hawker stalls typically serve roti prata with a side of curry for dipping—the perfect side dish or snack any time of the day! 

Laksa:

Laksa is another hawker dish that’s extremely popular among travelers. Known as a staple in Peranakan cuisine, laksa has a lot of different variants, but it typically consists of coconut milk, laksa leaves, prawns, cockles, and fish cake. 

Yu Sheng:

One such dish is the infamous Yu Sheng, credited to the 'four Heavenly Kings', a name given to four prominent Cantonese chefs who created it in 1964. Essentially a salad, Yu Sheng is typically only eaten during Chinese New Year. Each ingredient has a specific meaning, symbolising either wealth, health, luck, success or longevity.

Zhi char (White Pepper Crab):

Zhi char stalls serve Chinese food that is cooked very quickly in a blazing hot wok to pick up the almost mythical flavour of wok hei, which translates roughly to 'aroma of the wok' – a complex, charred, slightly smoky flavour. Zhi char stalls are where you will find crabs cooked in a variety of ways – chilli crab is of course the most well-known, but a local favourite is also the white pepper crab.

Mee Soto:

Mee Soto is another much-loved Malay dish. At face value, it is not unlike a Western-style chicken noodle soup, but it is flavoured with the rempah, which contains turmeric that stains the broth yellow and flavours it with a wonderful aroma and makes it taste unmistakably South-East Asian.

Several other eternally popular hawker centre fares have already been mentioned in earler blogs on Singapore food. 

--Raja Mitra