Hawker Centers With Kids: How to Eat in Singapore for the Price of a Coffee

Singapore is expensive for hotels and cheap for food, and the reason is the hawker center. A covered food court of independent stalls, each one doing one dish perfectly, with shared tables and prices that have barely moved in decades. A family eats well for less than a coffee costs at the hotel.

How it works. Sit down, note the table number, or leave a packet of tissues on the table to claim it, which is the local way. Walk around, order from three stalls, pay at each, and the food is brought to you or you carry it. Return the trays. Maxwell Food Centre, Lau Pa Sat, Old Airport Road and the hawker center at Chinatown Complex are the ones I send families to.

Hainanese chicken rice is the dish. Poached chicken, rice cooked in the chicken stock, a bowl of broth, and chili and ginger on the side. Tian Tian at Maxwell is the famous stall with the queue. The kids eat the chicken and the rice and leave the chili. It is the national dish and it costs a few dollars.

The rest of the list

Char kway teow, the fried flat noodles. Satay, ten skewers with peanut sauce, from the satay street at Lau Pa Sat in the evening. Roti prata, the flaky flatbread, with sugar for the kids and curry for you. Carrot cake, which is not cake and has no carrot, a fried radish cake with egg that every child eats. Laksa, the coconut noodle soup, for the adults. Kaya toast with a soft boiled egg for breakfast at any kopitiam.

Fresh sugarcane juice, lime juice, a Milo dinosaur, which is iced Milo with a pile of Milo powder on top and the drink your children will remember. Ice kacang, shaved ice with syrup and beans, for dessert.

Everything is clean, the water from the tap is safe, and the hawker centers are graded on hygiene. It is the one country in Asia where you can eat from any stall without thinking about it.

Planning Singapore with kids? Start with the full Singapore family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.