Travel bites: This easy-breezy stopover city is teeming with excellent food

I recently had to transit via Singapore which of course meant I had to add a couple of days to my journey for the sake of my greedy tummy.

Singapore is such an easy-breezy stopover, and a city-state teeming with excellent food. I had one evening and one whole day to play with.

The variety of cuisine on offer is staggering and there are loads of bars and restaurants that rub shoulders with fellow ‘world’s best’ to be explored, but on this occasion my game plan was simple, requiring no bookings and no ditching the comfy Birkies for something smarter.

I planned to follow my cravings, pent up over several years of Covid lockdowns and now unleashed as I set foot in Southeast Asia once again, to fill my boots with all my favourite hawker dishes.

My day and a bit allowed me to fit a few solid spots on my pilgrimage. At Maxwell Food Centre I made a beeline for Teochew fishball soup, at Lau Pa Sat I queued for chicken satay and chased that with a sugarcane juice and a plate of char kuey teow, I took my Singaporean friend’s advice and followed a spot of shopping with a visit to Ion Orchard’s basement level food hall where the Hawker Street section showcases six legendary hawker stalls plying their signature dishes – a bak chor mee from Famous Eunos and a plate of char siu pork chee cheong fun from Chef Wei HK Cheong Fun hit the spot.

But my favourite hawker meal of this very brief trip was in the food centre of the Chinatown Complex. There are well over 100 stalls to choose from in this labyrinthine space built in the early 1980s, but I was heeding the call for Hainanese chicken rice and my nose led me to Zhao Ji (aka Teo Kee).

The chooks are cooked whole as custom dictates, but the meat is sliced off the bone to serve – this may ruffle purist feathers but judging by the queue plenty of locals have no qualms about this departure from tradition.

Also straying from the usual, mixed purple-and-brown rice is offered as an alternative to white, and sets come with steamed greens on the side as well as the requisite broth and sauces, chilli, and ginger-spring onion.

I took my tray over to the open-air side of the market to enjoy my meal with natural light. On that side of the market, the tables were packed, almost all the customers were Chinatown residents of the 65-plus demographic, chewing the fat over large bottles of Tiger or Chang beer poured into glass handles painted with the number of the stall.

I smiled at the elderly couple in the table across from me sharing a clay pot rice dish, him selecting prime pieces of pork rib and greens to place in her bowl.

An elderly man asked if he could share my table and we chatted for a while – Mr Seah was his name and he told me in his semi-retirement he’s enjoying spending time on his commercial fish farm in the north of Singapore where he breeds valuable dragon fish.

Back outside, the public square was filled with music thanks to an amplified speaker set up on the steps. DJ William, in his late 60s, kept the high-energy tunes coming – old time-y Latin beats with Chinese lyrics, while a social dance crew of pensioners headed up by a 77-year-old fellow called Yoyo sashayed across the square, combining line-dancing and salsa moves. 70-year-old Nancy stood out in her purple get-up, happily taking a break for a chat and to pose for a photo before cha-cha-ing back into the formation.

Zhao Ji Hainanese Chicken Rice, stall #02-180, Chinatown Complex food centre, 335 Smith St, Singapore. It is open 11am–11pm, seven days.

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