9: Pretending to know about hawker centres

Expat ≠ expert.

In Singapore, nothing gives you more credibility than local hawker knowledge. It’s like knowing the best pubs in London or the best economy seats on long-haul flights - such insider knowledge represents tireless years of research. Or at least several minutes of Googling.

There are 118 hawker centres in Singapore (thanks Google), and as someone that has visited ooh, maybe ten of them after living here for four years, I have absolutely no authority to pronounce on them but that won’t stop me from trying.

First, a quick primer. Think of hawker centres like festival food trucks that never left Glastonbury. Dozens of food stalls stand next to each other with communal tables and chairs spread in front of them. Most of the stalls specialise in particular dishes – there are satay stalls, chicken-rice stalls, laksa stalls. It’s almost all delicious, and it’s almost all incredibly cheap.

This is exactly what an expat would say, of course. Glastonbury indeed! So, here are some tips to sound like a pro.

Lesson number one: never recommend Newton. This is the mark of a hopeless noob. Newton featured prominently in Crazy Rich Asians, and is therefore considered a sell-out despite the fact that everyone in Singapore loves Crazy Rich Asians. Proof of Newton’s bogusness exists in the shape of hipster craft beer stalls, when everyone knows that Heineken or Tiger are the only true hawker beers.

In the same cannot category is Lau Pa Sat, the most sanitised and mainstream hawker, near all the big office towers downtown, and frequented only by the most vanilla of tourists for whom even Tiger Beer is rather exotic.

Any suggestion of these two hawkers should be treated with extreme scorn, especially if you secretly love going to both.

Lesson number two: always pay cash. Many of the stalls take mobile payments now, some even take cards, but cash is the true hawker way. Handing over a $10 bill and saying ‘eh sia sia uncle’ to the wizened old stall-holder isn’t embarrassing when other people do it, so why should it be any different for a balding middle-aged Englishman?

A balding middle-aged Englishman fitting right in

Speaking of which, lesson number three: use proper Singlish. Sia sia means thank you. Reserving a table is called chopeing. Take-away is called tabao. Shiok is a general term of approval, which also sounds embarrassing when I say it. Paywave means using contactless card payment when you realise you don’t actually have any cash after all. ‘Again?’ means ‘sorry can you repeat that please?’ when you can’t understand the wizened old stall-holder speaks Singlish back to you.

Lesson number four: know your favourite stall at any given hawker. It’s common knowledge that the best stalls have the longest queues, but it’s way better to know an under-the-radar stall that does the dumplings which are super shiok.

Also, don’t simply choose a stall because you think it’s got a funny name, like that one at Maxwell called Economical Delights. And don’t whatever you do tell anyone that you are secretly planning to open a stall called Laksa Sense Of Taste, because that’s so good that they might steal it and then you’ll have to sue them because that idea is your golden ticket and it’ll be so successful there will be a Netflix series about how the balding middle-aged Englishman showed everyone he was RIGHT ALL ALONG even though he’s not sure if the name is ironic or not.

In the meantime, I will continue exploring the other 118 hawker centres across Singapore.

Or at least Googling them.

---