These are the twelve food that I would always recommend to my visitors who are visiting Singapore for the first time. I wouldn’t miss any of the food listed below.
Must Eat Food for Visitors in Singapore
Laksa
A spicy dish. The broth in cooked with a concoction of spice and coconut milk. Rice noodle is served with this broth together with prawns and fishcakes slice.
Fried Kway Teow
Fried Kway Teow is better known as Char Kway Teow. The dish consist of both rice noodle and wheat noodle. The two types of noodle are fried in a black sweet sauce and chinese sausages and cockles, the highlight, are added into the dish.
Chicken Rice
The rice are cooked in chicken broth. The rice is served with either steam chicken or roast chicken. The way the local eat is to drizzle the dark sweet sauce and chilli over the rice. Likewise the chicken meat is also dipped into the sauces mixed with chilli, sweet dark sauce and ginger sauce.
Mee Siam / Mee Rebus
Mee Siam is with mee hoon and it is served in a sour and spicy gravy. Usually the dish has hard boiled egg.
Mee Rebus is wheat noodles with a spicy and slightly sweet gravy that has a little Japanese curry taste in it. It is accompanied with fried “hard” tofu cube, hard boiled egg and slice chilli.
Fried Hokkien Prawn Noodles
Fried Hokkien Prawn Noodles has wheat noodle, rice noodle and prawn as the main ingredients. The fried mee is rich in prawn flavour as it is cooked in a prawn stock which is the key iingredient. Not all stalls serve a good plate of Fried Hokkien Mee.
Fried Carrot Cake
You can choose to have the Fried Carrot Cake sweet or savoury. We usually call the sweet Fried Carrot Cake as black and the savoury as white.
The steam radish rice cake is cut into cubes and fried with garlic and eggs. If patron requests for black, it will further fried the dish in a black sweet sauce. Otherwise, white is order, it will be served without the black sauce. Chilli sauce can be added to fried with the dish in both the black and white.
Fish Ball Noodles (dry/soup) / Bak Chor Mee (minced meat noodle)
The two dishes are a common items which you can find in almost all food centers or food courts. Both the Fish Ball Noodles and the Bak Chor Mee are simple dishes that can be served dry or in soup. For the dry noodles the noodles, chilli, oil, ketchup are added to enhance the taste.
Kaya Butter Toast
Kaya is an Asia jam which is made mainly with coconut and eggs. The bread used is usually the traditional bread, toasted and the kaya is spread generously on the toasted bread together with a piece of butter sandwiched between the toast bread. Sinfully delicious.
Chilli Crab
The crab is cooked in a special chilli sauce. The sauce is great for the mantou, fried or steam.
Chwee Kuey
Chwee Kuey is a savoury dish. It is made up of two main items; the steamed cake which is made of rice flour and it is topped with fried preserved salted turnip bits (aka chai poh). The preserved salted turnip are fried with garlic and onions so that it is fragrant.
This dish is served with chilli sauce.
Rojak
Rojak is a dish of various fruits and vegetables mixed in a fermented prawn paste sauce. It has an acquired taste. Visitors should try this dish, as the taste is very unique.
Popiah
A wrap of cooked vegetable with stripped turnip and carrot, sweet sauce, chopped boiled egg, chinese sausage, lettuce, chopped peanuts. Some may add prawn to the wrap.
Satay
Meat skewers marinated in spice. For a greater experience, be sure to dip the satay into the special peanut sauce, unless you are allergy to peanut. Eat it with rice dumpling known as kedupat, that’s how the local will eat it.
Peranankan Cuisine
It is hardly mentioned about Peranankan Cuisine. Peranankan are straits Chinese. It has an unique culture. Peranankan has ascendent from China as they have been living in this part of the world which is very much influenced by the Malay culture, hence adopted a way of living in the cooking as well. Peranankan Cuisine is unique to this part of the way. I encourage you to try while you are in Singapore.
If you are daring, I would urge you to try durian, a strong unique smelling fruit. Some would describe the smell as aammonia. That’s for people who do not like it. Don’t be discouraged by the smell, pick up your courage and at least lick it. You may be surprise to find yourself enjoying the fruit after that, but that’s not a guarantee. It has an acquired taste. As for me, I am a durian lover.
It may not be practical for visitors to travel all over Singapore to find the best food for all the items listed above, unless the purpose your trip is solely to find the best food in Singapore. I would strongly recommend visitor to visit Food Republic, People’s Park Food Center, Chinatown Food Center and Old Airport Road Food Center. You can find all the above listed food in these four places. Most importantly, they serve delicious authentic local food.
I have done a chart to show the availabilities of the food items in the four food place with recommended store and its unit. How do you read the chart? A ‘x’ at the column of the food place for a food item indicate it is available in that particular food center or food court listed. If you see a green cell at a particular food place, there is a rerecommended store. The name and its unit is listed.
Food Republic – Vivocity
Level 3, VivoCity (next to Sentosa Express Monorail), 1 Harbour Front Walk, Singapore 098585
Getting There: By MRT, HarbourFront Station
Opening Hours: Sun – Thu 1000 to 2200; Fri, Sat & Public Holiday 1000 to 2300. Toast Box opens from 0830 daily
People’s Park Food Centre
Block 32 New Market Road, Level 1, Singapore 050032
Getting There: By MRT: Northeast line – Chinatown Station
Opening Hours: Depending on stall. Generally, daily 1100 to 0900
Chinatown Complex Market
Block 335 Smith Street, Chinatown Complex Market, Level 2, Singapore 050335
Getting There: By MRT: Northeast line – Chinatown Station, East West line – Outram Park Station
Opening Hours: Depending on stall. Generally, daily 0700 to 0930
Old Airport Road Food Center
Block 19 Old Airport Road, Level 1, Singapore 390019
Getting There: By MRT: Circle Line – Mountbatten or Dakota
Opening Hours: Depending on stall. Generally, daily 0700 to 0930
Hi there! Do you know if they make any plugins to help with SEO?
I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very
good results. If you know of any please share. Thanks!
Hi there (restaurants in singapore),
I have no idea what’s plugins or keywords help. I never write with keywords in mind but rather my thoughts, feels, observation, findings and … In short, I write what I think I should be sharing with my readers. Sorry, won’t be able to help.
Cheers
Michelle (NAHMJ)