Where To Eat in Singapore: From Essential Hawker Centres to New-Wave Restaurants

Singapore’s culinary history stretches back more than a century. Some long-running hawker stalls have been around since before the country became independent. These food businesses – often family-run with recipes passed down through generations – are an essential part of any Singapore trip, whether you’re on a dedicated holiday or simply stopping over in between flights.

There are countless dishes, stalls and hawker centres to try, but a new wave of bars and restaurants is broadening the scene even further. In Singapore, you can truly get everything, from smoky noodles and crispy roti to natural wine and fine-dining fare.

It’s hard to have a bad meal here, but if you need help narrowing it down, start with these.

Maxwell Food Centre

Maxwell is one of the easiest places to begin a Singapore food adventure. The Chinatown hawker centre is compact enough to navigate without a strategy, but packed with stalls serving dishes that have become synonymous with the city: from chicken rice and congee to wonton noodles and fresh juices. Yes, it’s popular with visitors, but that’s not necessarily a reason to skip it. When time is limited, Maxwell’s concentration of classic Singaporean dishes makes it an efficient stop.

1 Kadayanallur Street, Singapore

Chinatown Complex Food Centre

If Maxwell is the approachable introduction, Chinatown Complex is the deeper dive. The sprawling hawker centre is one of Singapore’s largest, with a huge range of stalls covering everything from traditional fishball noodles and rice plates piled high with roast meats to braised duck and desserts like cendol, a shaved-ice treat that’s good for cooling down in the heat. Plus, Smith Street Taps is the go for local and international craft beers. The complex rewards a little wandering, so don’t arrive with a strict list of must-eats. Instead, take in the sheer variety of what’s on offer and order what calls out to you – this is the kind of place where one dish can easily turn into three.

335 Smith Street, Singapore

Big Wine Freaks

Singapore’s new-wave dining scene straddles the line between restaurant, bar and social club – and Big Wine Freaks is a good example. More than 500 wine labels, including rare champagne and burgundy, sit alongside a European and Japanese-inspired menu, with a soundtrack of downtempo music. Set in a colonial-style building in Chinatown, the pink-and-red-washed room offers bar seating with a look into the open kitchen and an amphitheatre-style tiered lounge where you can settle in for a DJ set.

44 Bukit Pasoh Road, Singapore

Dirty Supper

By day, it’s a historic 90-year-old local kopi tiam serving kaya toast and bowls of bak chor mee (minced meat noodles). By night, it’s Dirty Supper: a restaurant by Australian chef-owner Peter Smit where the plates are produce-led and constantly changing. The menu leans heavily into whole-animal cooking, meaning what you eat depends on what’s available that day. Most items are finished over fire and might include grilled pork heart, barbequed mullet or roasted lamb in various forms. The open kitchen keeps the focus on food, while cocktail bar Dirty Sips handles drinks and wine next door. There’s now a reason to visit by day, too, with brunch running Wednesday to Sunday.

78 Moh Guan Terrace, Singapore

Foliage

Foliage takes a more intimate approach to contemporary Singaporean food. The restaurant is run by chef-owner Dillon Ng and draws on the country’s multicultural food traditions, with dishes that interpret local and Straits Asian cuisine through the lens of Japanese seasonality. The 12-seat dining room is particularly suited to travellers looking for something more considered after working their way through the hawker centres. The menu evolves with the kitchen and available produce, so skip the preliminary research and let the chef guide you.

Onze at Tanjong Pagar, 11 Kee Seng Street, Singapore

The Coconut Club

The Coconut Club makes a strong case for the humble coconut as the defining ingredient of a meal. Its signature nasi lemak is built around coconut milk-infused rice, and the ayam goreng berempah (spiced fried chicken with crispy aromatic crumbs) is a Michelin Bib Gourmand recommendation. The menu now extends across three locations – Beach Road, Siglap and New Bahru – so you can visit whichever is most convenient during your stopover. All have their own benefits, but the New Bahru location is particularly handy for travellers. It sits within the larger creative shopping and culture complex, making it easy to continue browsing once you’ve finished eating.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Singapore Airlines.