Whether you have $1 for a snack or $35 for an entrée, Singapore has something for you when it comes to food. The traditional Singaporean cuisine is a blend of cultures that pre-date modern Singapore. It’s a blend of Malay, Indonesia, Chinese, Indian, and a few influences from the West. You can walk along Fullerton Road to find some of the most expensive restaurants in the country. You can also visit one of its hawker centres for a taste of authentic local cuisine.
There are too many places to eat in Singapore . It’s no wonder millions of people flock to this tiny city-state every year to sample its amazing food offerings. But if you truly want a taste of this vibrant city, you should check out authentic Singaporean dishes that will blow you away.
Hainanese Chicken Rice
Perhaps there’s no Singaporean dish more famous than Hainanese chicken rice . Your local Asian restaurant might have this on their menu, but none can do it quite like the chefs from hawker centres. The dish is very simple. It is steamed chicken with rice cooked in savoury chicken stock. You can use at least three dipping sauces—grated ginger with oil, chilli paste, and soy sauce. Mix the three dipping sauces to make a fantastic accompaniment to the dish. 
Again, a local Asian restaurant will have this on their menu, but this is Singapore’s “national dish.” They take pride in how they make their chilli crab. There are many ways to make chilli crab, but the two most popular styles are cooking the crab with spicy tomato chilli sauce or black pepper sauce. Of course, if you want to taste true authenticity, go for the sambal sauce (local chilli and shrimp paste) with tomato paste and scrambled eggs. In some restaurants, the crabs are cooked in a clay pot with vermicelli soup.
The quality of the crabs is important in this dish. You cannot recreate the dish if you don’t have big and succulent crabs to cook. Singapore’s crabs are local, but some are imported from Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and the east coast of Africa.
Laksa
What better way to honour Singapore’s Malay and Chinese heritage than through laksa? It’s a combination of rice noodles with spicy coconut curry soup. That’s followed by shrimp, fish cakes, eggs, chicken meat, some other protein, and vegetables. In Singapore, you can also find water-based laksa, but coconut curry soup is more popular. There’s no shortage of restaurants serving laksa in Singapore. Every food stall offers a variant of the dish.
Wanton Mee
If you have ever been to Hong Kong, this dish is reminiscent of the island’s wonton soup. It makes sense, too, because this dish is an inheritance from Chinese Cantonese. The only difference is that Singapore’s wanton mee is dry. It is made with yellow egg noodles, wonton dumplings (made with minced pork and shrimp), boiled vegetables, and char siu. They are all mixed in a salty-sweet oyster sauce.
So are you ready to try some of Singapore’s most famous food? Make sure that you’re not on a diet when you visit Singapore. You can never say no to these sumptuous offerings.
