Hey Hive!
Even though there are still people getting covid, it's basically being treated like a cold these days so thankfully almost everything is back to normal now! There are no more restrictions on dining these days and you don't even have to wear a mask anymore if you don't want to! It's a huge relief and this allows us to try out different food places again!
We were in town the other day and we decided to try one of the most famous hawker centres in Singapore! If you're familiar with Crazy Rich Asians, you'd remember this scene where they ate at a hawker centre, and it's a real place called Newton Food Centre!
Source: popsugar
We've never been here before since it's a little out of the way from places we'd normally visit but decided to try it for once as we were somewhat close by. We went in the early evening when it's slightly cooler since the place is half outdoors and gets quite warm in the afternoon.
On the way there we spotted these wild chickens! We wondered if they were actually owned by the hawkers for eggs but probably figured they were wild ones since the hawker centre is across the road. If they were I guess the chickens managed to cross the road? 😅
But it's probably unlikely since the roads here can be quite busy and you have to cross by an overhead bridge to get to the other side.
When we arrived it was actually pretty packed already at about 5pm in the evening! Granted, it was a Friday but it looked like it was mostly tourists here.
The whole hawker centre is fairly large for such an old one. Newton Food Centre has been around since 1971 and as it's located in the heart of Singapore (near Newton MRT station) it is probably one of the most well-known local food centres to tourists. I'd say it's a good representation of what Singapore hawker centres are like, with over 80 stalls loaded with local hawker treats from Chinese to Malay, Indian cuisines and more.
The layout of Newton Food Centre is such that most of the tables and seats are located in the central alfresco dining area, with the hawker stalls surrounding the perimeter under the sheltered areas, with more tables and seats in front of the hawker stalls themselves.
Now that it's been renovated, the venue is cooler with giant fans with rain sensors, waterproof blinds and LED bulbs, or so I've read. I don't really remember coming here before this so I don't have a frame of reference of what it looked like before.
I guess it was something like this:
Source: tinyurbankitchen
But I did find an even older one from the 1980s:
Source: roots.gov.sg
Anyway, since it was pretty packed when we visited, we quickly scoured for seats and sat as soon as we could. The sky was also getting quite cloudy so we thought it was going to rain.
After we were seated, Sean went to find some food from the stalls with less of a queue since we saw some stalls had quite a queue already. I think there are some stalls part of the Michelin Guide here among some other local favourites.
Our go-to whenever we visit a hawker centre is to get Char Kway Teow and Carrot Cake (but not the dessert kind). They're some of our favourite hawker dishes! Thankfully we didn't have to wait too long because we were pretty hungry from smelling all the delicious aromas from the many stalls around.
I've written about this dish multiple times before but if you're unfamiliar, Char Kway Teow is a flat rice noodle dish stir-fried over high heat with garlic, light and dark soy sauce, chilli paste, whole prawns, shelled blood cockles, chopped Chinese chives, slices of Chinese sausage, bean sprouts and fishcake.
It was pretty good, but nothing that fantastic imo. It was a little on the sweeter side than I would've liked though. We've definitely had better at another place.
The carrot cake (or technically radish cake) colloquially called Chai tow kway is a common dish of Teochew cuisine consisting of stir-fried cubes of radish cake. It's only called carrot cake because of how it translates in Hokkien because 'chai tow' can mean radish or carrot.
This specific carrot cake was a little more eggy but it was nice and savoury while the radish was bouncy with a slightly softer melty texture. It was yummy though!
You can tell how happy I was that we got food because I was getting really hungry especially seeing everyone eating all around us.
Even Sean was so happy to finally get some food since we hadn't eaten for a while:
After we demolished those snacks we were thinking of what else to eat but it was getting a lot more crowded. And we were thinking if we should take off but unfortunately we made the wrong decision of ordering more food. Specifically from this barbecue stall since I wanted to try the barbecued sambal stingray here; another common hawker dish.
It was unfortunate because the stall initially looked empty so Sean ordered not knowing that they must've had a huge backlog of orders since we ended up waiting for ONE HOUR for our one dish! We did go and check on them multiple times but they always said the order was coming. And because we paid for it already we couldn't just leave.
It was a really unfortunate experience but we ended up waiting until the sky was dark! Thankfully it didn't rain but it did drizzle a little bit.
We got so sick of waiting for so long. But finally our sambal stingray arrived and it looked kinda small tbh. We did get 2 bowls of rice to go along with it and it tasted alright, but nothing spectacular.
We were pretty hungry by then so we did devour it but it was definitely not worth an hour-long wait. It didn't have a strong barbecue/charcoal taste, but the sambal was alright. It was a little thick compared to other stingray we had though.
But we were so fed up of waiting by then that we felt so disappointed even before we started eating. I feel like the owners should've said how long the wait was going to be before we ordered, because who would wait this long for just one dish?
After we finished we promptly left since it was getting quite warm and after the slight rain it was quite humid too. Once we were out of the hawker centre the air was a lot fresher and cooler.
That one hour wait definitely soured our experience and pretty much solidified our belief that we should never go to these touristy places ever again. So this will probably be the first and last time I visit Newton Food Centre.
But if you ever decide to go there just be aware you might have to wait for certain stalls. There are other hawker centres that are way more convenient and not as much of a tourist hub that I would recommend but if you really want to come here I'd suggest visiting on a non-weekend during off peak hours.
Thanks so much for reading!
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