Singapore Dining, Bars and Pubs

Local singer Dick Lee has a song about Singapore titled "Fried Rice Paradise," a parody on one of the Singaporeans' habitual tendencies—eating! And how true it is in this garden city! It offers a veritable melting pot of food choices for even the most discerning diner on almost any budget and around the clock. The wide variety of food stems from the multi-racial society that makes up the very fabric of Singapore.

FOOD HALLS

When you come to Singapore, do what the locals do and eat what the locals eat—if you have the stomach for it, that is. The cheapest of meals available come from neighborhood coffee shops (an open-air floor space with tables and chairs where customers order from the stalls and wait to be served or take it with them) and hawker centres (large open spaces with built-in tables and chairs where customers give the stall operator their table numbers and their order is served).

The city's best coffee shops and hawker centres include Maxwell Road Food Centre (a popular hawker centre known for cheap, tasty food), S-11 (a popular 24-hour coffee shop chain that serves adequately prepared food and is a hangout for art school types), Chin Chin (serves up excellent chicken rice as well as fresh Chinese dishes), and Newton Circus Food Centre. Look for the hawker centres and coffee shops near the bus interchanges and train stations located near satellite towns as well. Tampines and Bedok are good places to start your gastronomic adventure.

There are also air-conditioned food courts located in the basement of just about every shopping mall. These are usually pricier than coffee shops and hawker centres, but make up in comfort for what they lack in character. Scotts Picnic is a generic, standard-issue food court offering a mix of cuisines from all ethnic groups, while many of the eating options in Raffles City cater to the more sophisticated.