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. I am unable to taste them since I am so far away from home but my official taster aka my mom who is in Singapore says they are good, guess I will only find out how good they are the next time I go back to Singapore. 
Check out the long lines!
A hawker centre or food centre (Simplified Chinese: 小贩中心 or 熟食中心) is the name given to open-air complexes in Malaysia and Singapore housing many stalls that sell a variety of inexpensive food. They are typically found near public housing estates or transport hubs (such as bus interchanges or train stations).
Hawker centres sprung up in urban areas following the rapid urbanisation in the 1950s and 1960s. In many cases, they were built partly to address the problem of unhygienic food preparation by unlicensed street hawkers. More recently, they have become less ubiquitous due to growing affluence in the urban populations of Malaysia and Singapore. Particularly in Singapore, they are increasingly being replaced by food courts, which are indoor, air conditioned versions of hawker centres located in shopping malls and other commercial venues.
In the 1950s and 1960s, hawker centres were considered to be a venue for the less affluent. They had a reputation for unhygienic food, partly due to the frequent appearance of stray domestic pets and pests. To make matters worse, many hawker centres were poorly managed by their operators, often lacking running water and proper facilities for cleaning. More recently, hygiene standards have improved, with pressure from the local authorities. This includes the implementation of licensing requirements, where a sufficient standard of hygiene is required for the stall to operate, and rewarding exceptionally good hygiene. Upgrading or reconstruction of hawker centres was initiated in the late 1990s in Singapore. At the same time, hawker centres were renamed food centres.
The hawker centres in Singapore are owned by three government bodies, namely the National Environment Agency (NEA) under the parent Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources (MEWR), Housing and Development Board (HDB) and JTC Corporation. All the centres, in turn, are managed by NEA.
Note: Thank you Wikipedia for the description.
This is a popular dish during Chinese New Year in Singapore. Nearly everyone would have tossed Yu Sheng at least once during the Chinese New Year holidays, with some chalking up multiple tosses under their belt. Punning on the words, “Yu Sheng”, which literally means raw fish, it auspiciously meant abundance and growth. Just what we need every New Year, the Chinese thought. What better way, then to embody these symbols of good luck by eating them!
Yet this entrenched tradition is very much a recent Singapore invention, with it gaining popularity only in the last twenty years! Different theories suggest Yu Sheng was either created and popularised by Cantonese restaurants in Singapore or of its Teochew antecedents. As to what is fact and what is fiction, will require some research to put the matter at rest.
The following recipe is somewhat "modern" with the use of salmon, a imported fish that gained popularity in the Chinese food market only in recent years. Before, other local "white flesh fish" was used
Beyond all that, this is just a wonderfully delicious salad!
Hokkien mee uses the same egg noodles and rice noodles used in Hokkien hae mee, but is stir fried and served dry. The main ingredients are shrimps and small pieces of sliced pork. It is usually served with lime and sambal chilli.
Dim sum 點心 is a Chinese light meal or brunch, served usually with Chinese tea. It is eaten some time from morning to early afternoon with family or friends. Dim sum consists of a wide spectrum of choices. It includes combinations of meat, seafood, vegetables, as well as desserts and fruit. The various items are usually served in a small steamer basket or on a small plate. It is interesting to note that in the contemporary Cantonese language, a dim sum meal is usually not referred to as dim sum chan, but as yum cha (literally "tea drinking"), consisting of traditional Cantonese-style dim sum snacks. What is referred to as dim sum chan is rather a cross between Western style high tea and fast food, consisting of Hong Kong adaptation of Western pastries/appetizers, also referred to as dim sum, or more specifically, "say1 dim2"(Western snacks/pastries/appetizers).
Lor mee (Chinese: 卤面) is a Chinese-inspired noodle dish served in a thick starchy gravy and fat and flat yellow noodles. The dish is eaten by Hokkiens in Singapore and Malaysia. The thick gravy is made of corn starch, spices and eggs. The ingredients added into the noodles are usually ngo hiang, fish cake, fish, round and flat meat dumplings (usually pork), half a boiled egg, and other items depending on the stall and the price paid. Vinegar and garlic can be added as an optional item. The dish is also eaten with red chilli. Traditional versions also include bits of fried fish as topping though few stalls serve this version anymore.
Popiah (Simplified Chinese: 薄饼; pinyin: bóbǐng or Chinese: 薄皮卷; pinyin: bópíjuǎn) is a Hokkien-style fresh spring roll common in Singapore and Malaysia. Popiah is often eaten in Fujian on Qingming Festival.
A popiah "skin" is a thin pancake made from wheat flour which is covered with a sweet chili pepper sauce before it is filled. The filling is mainly finely grated jicama that has been cooked with a combination of other ingredients such as bean sprouts, French beans, lettuce leaves, grated carrots, dried prawns, Chinese sausage, seaweed and shredded omelette. As a fresh spring roll, the popiah skin itself is not fried.
In Singapore and Malaysia there are "popiah parties," where the ingredients are laid out and guests make their own popiah with proportions of ingredients to their own personal liking.
Similar foods in other cuisines include Lumpiang Sariwa (Filipino), spring rolls (Chinese) and bò bía (Vietnamese) and fajitas (Tex-Mex).
Roti John, essentially an omelette sandwich, is a popular Malay breakfast and snack item in Singapore and Malaysia. The ingredients include minced mutton, onion, egg, tomato-chilli sauce and a baguette loaf. The mutton mince, egg and chopped onions are fried on a skillet and then placed into the cavity of a baguette halved lengthwise. The whole is then briefly pan-fried on the skillet and then served after being cut into several portions. A variant is to place the minced mutton, onions and sauce inside the baguette, then baguette dipped into beaten egg, and the whole then panfried on the skillet.
'Roti' is the Hindi, Urdu and Malay word for bread, and more generally for any bread-based or bread-like food, including sandwiches and pancakes. The origin of the 'John' in the name is allegedly due to the Western origin of the Baguette and the tomato sauce used in the dish. During the years of British Colonial rule, all Caucasians and Westerners were colloquially and affectionately referred to as 'John' in Malay, and as such, the nickname of 'Roti John' (literally 'John Bread') was easily arrived at.
Rojak (Chinese: 囉喏; pinyin: luōrĕ) is a fruit and vegetable salad dish commonly found in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia (where it is called rujak). The term "Rojak" is Malay for mixture, is also used as a colloquial expression for an eclectic mix, and in particular is often used to describe the multi-ethnic character of Malaysian and Singaporean society.
Ngo Hiang (五香 wǔxiāng) is a unique Hokkien dish served in many hawker centres. It is essentially a composition of various meats and vegetables and other ingredients, such as a sausage-esque roll consisting of minced pork and prawn flavoured with five-spice powder, rolled inside a beancurd skin and deep-fried, lup cheong, cucumber, century egg, ginger, deep-fried egg, deep-fried beancurd, fishball and many others. It is usually served with chili sauce and a house-special sweet sauce.
Oyster omelette 蚝煎 is a Chinese dish which originated in Fujian. It is also popular in places with Fujianese influences such as in Guangdong, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan (where it is often sold in night markets).
The dish consists of an omelette with a filling primarily composed of small oysters. Starch is mixed into the egg batter, giving the resulting egg wrap a thicker consistency. Depending on regional variation, a savory sauce may then be poured on top of the omelette for added taste.
Being so far from home sweet home which is good old Singapore 新加坡, I can only salivate 流口水 when I see this pic of mee siam 米暹, lontong and curry puff 咖喱卜 ... drool drool. KT and I tried the lontong at one of the NY chinatown's malaysian restaurant and trust me we were NOT impressed at all.
Mee Siam 米暹 - which means "Siamese noodle", is a dish of thin rice noodles (vermicelli) in spicy, sweet and sour light gravy. It is one of the popular one-dish meal in Singapore. A "dry" version, which is essentially stir-frying the rice noodles with the same spices used in the "gravy" version, are also popular among the Chinese in Singapore.
Originally a Thai dish, it became a Nyonya specialty that is now prepared by Indians, Malays as well as Chinese stalls in Singapore with slight variation in ingredients. It is served with salted soy beans, dried bean curd 豆干, boiled egg鸡蛋and tamarind, garnished with spring onions and Chinese chives.
Lontong - Traditionally, the rice is rolled and compressed in banana leaves, as seen above. It is also known as Nasi Impit [also spelt Nasi Himpit]. In certain places, Lontong is a dish itself - where the rice roll is cut up into bite-sized pieces and served in a coconut vegetable stew [similar to Sayur Lodeh], and topped with sambal and toasted coconut [kerisik]. However, Lontong is the term most familiar internationally referring the Rice Roll only.
Curry puff 咖喱卜 - Malaysian, Thai, and Singaporean snack which is of Malay origin. It is a small pie consisting of specialised curry with chicken and potatoes in a deep-fried pastry shell. The curry is especially thick and rich to prevent itself from running.
This snack is found at many stores, especially at Malay food stalls. The Malay version of this snack is known as epok-epok which is smaller than the curry puff. Other varies of the epok epok that is filled without chicken and half a boiled egg and an alternative is canned sardines. Curry puffs are also sold by Chinese stalls throughout the island.
Some of the more renowned curry puff includes A1 Curry Puff and Old Chang Kee. Polar Puffs and Cakes introduced the curry puff with western puff pastry, which has a different taste and shape. This version of the curry puff can be found also at Delifrance in Singapore as Curry Chicken Feuillette. Other puff snacks modelled on the curry puff concept have also been introduced. For example, A1 Curry Puff also sells puffs with sardine, yam, durian, corn and even custard filling.
Best chilli sauce I have tasted so far, I brought it back from Singapore as gifts for some of my Singaporean friends in NY and even they say it is really good. When stated 'extra hot' on the front of the bottle, they really meant it! ... hahaha. Taste really good when you dip BBQ meat in it, gives you the kick!
It is 8am in New York and I am craving for a hot cup of teh-si kosong (tea with evaporated milk without sugar) and some toasted butter+kaya (coconut egg jam) roti (bread)!!!! Knowing myself, I would even gobble up some other breakfast goodies e.g kuehs found in the Singapore koti tiams (neighborhood coffeeshop).
More details: Made from eggs, coconut milk, sugar and pandan leaves for that unmistakeable fragrance, Kaya can come green in color if you prefer the pandan flavor and fragrance. It can also come brown in color if you prefer the flavor and fragrance of palm sugar or gula melaka. Kaya is great on toast with tea or coffee. It can be especially tantalizing with a couple of runny eggs.
This is my fave indian rice stall in Singapore. Ignore the fact that they call Orchard Towers the 'pick up mall' or one of the 'Legal Red Light Districts', they do have good food at the basement food court.
