Singapore Hawker Culture · Singapore as Asia's Kitchen

I am standing here at the spot at Singapore River where Sir Stamford Raffles landed in 1819. This spot was a village with the Temenggong's house just steps away. Across the river was a swamp with a small fish market. The first market in modern Singapore history.

Raffles brought in labourers from China and India to work in the British East India Company trading post across the river at today's Boat Quay. The Indian and Chinese labourers brought their ancient cuisines to Singapore, laying the foundation of Singapore's hawker culture.

The Chinese lived in the Chinese campong west of Singapore River. Teochew were settled at Singapore River, Hokkien at Telok Ayer, Cantonese at Kreta Ayer and Hakka at Cross Street.

Today, the site of the fish market is the foyer of one of Singapore's major banks. In 1824, Raffles moved the fish market a mile west to Telok Ayer Bay making way for Boat Quay and linked the two with Market Street. The bayfront fish market (at the intersection of Market Street and Malacca Street around today's Republic Plaza) was named Telok Ayer Market.

When Telok Ayer Bay was reclaimed from the sea, the market moved to its present location in 1894. Inside the Victorian era cast-iron building, hawkers sold fish, meat and vegetables.

Outside the market, it was teeming with mobile street hawkers selling cooked food. Hawkers congregate wherever people gathered. Singapore hawker culture have always been closely intertwined with Singaporeans' daily lives.

It was almost a hundred years later in 1973 that the street hawkers were moved inside the market under the hawker centre building programme. Telok Ayer Market was also renamed Lau Pa Sat 老巴刹 which in Hokkien and Teochew means "Old Market".

The variety of food stalls in Lau Pa Sat today is typical of the wide range of dishes in Singapore hawker centres. There are Chinese, Indian, Malay, and Western food as well as Middle Eastern, Japanese, Korean food stalls and more.

Asia's Kitchen

CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Singapore can be viewed as Asia's Kitchen. If Asia is a big house, Singapore is its kitchen. Singapore not only receives food cultures from all over Asia but also turn these overseas cuisines into uniquely Singapore dishes that make up Singapore hawker food culture.

Singapore hawkers are innovators. The dishes of different cultures that immigrants brought into Singapore rarely stay unchanged from where it came from. More often than not, the dishes evolve over time at the creative hands of Singapore hawkers. They become Singapore dishes that are similar yet cannot be found in the same form in their countries of origin.

Singapore Chicken Rice

Let's take just one example - chicken rice from Hainan (China), Thailand and Indonesia.

From Lau Pa Sat, I walked 15 minutes to Purvis Street, part of the old Hainanese quarter which included Middle Road and Seah Street. The Hainanese were late comers to Singapore. When the Hainanese arrived in Singapore mostly from around the 1890s, Chinese Campong was already overpopulated, so they were settled here between European Town and the Arab Campong.

In the mid-1940s after the Second World War, jobs were scarce, so some Hainanese became hawkers, among whom were chicken rice sellers. Hainanese chicken rice stalls were well received and Hainanese chicken rice restaurants soon sprouted up. The most famous was Swee Kee at 51 Middle Road. People from across Singapore and tourists from regional countries came to Swee Kee for their famous Hainanese chicken rice.

In its most basic form, Hainanese chicken rice consists of just poached chicken, air cooled, served with rice boiled with chicken stock, ginger and garlic dip, and without any dressing sauce.

Similarly, Swee Kee's Hainanese chicken were poached and air cooled in the window. It was eaten with rice fried with garlic, ginger and boiled with chicken stock and pandan leaf. The chopped chicken were served without dressing and eaten with chili and ginger sauce mixed with chicken oil / stock.

While Swee Kee was credited for popularising Hainanese chicken rice among Singaporeans, it was Mandarin Hotel Chatterbox cafe that put Singapore chicken rice on the world map.

SGT Kiang (second from left) helped developed Chatterbox's iconic chicken rice as part of the Mandarin Hotel opening team led by executive chef Peter Gehrman in 1971. SGT Kiang's son Raymond (first from left) and daughter Susan today run Jiang Ji Traditional Hainanese Chicken Rice.

By the 1970s, Singapore chicken rice had incorporated both Hainanese and Cantonese influences. The poached bird is dunked or doused with cold water to cool it down quickly, lock in the juices and flavours, as well as smoothen the meat and skin. The cold bath also jellies the fat. The chicken is dressed with a blend of oyster sauce, soy sauce and sesame oil. Chatterbox cafe pioneered serving the chicken deboned to cater to overseas guests.

Thai Chicken Rice

While Chinese came to Singapore over 200 years ago, Thais come here in numbers only from the 1970s, and especially the 1980s. Thais were mostly engaged in construction and manufacturing in industrialising Singapore. The numbers of Thais in Singapore declined to less than 50,000 since the 2010s as our economy restructured and turned towards more South Asian and Chinese workers.

Golden Mile Complex is the "Little Thailand" of Singapore. Today, it is a shadow of its heyday in the 1980s to 1990s, but still attracts many Thais with the Thai supermarket, Thai restaurants, remittance services, personal services, etc. Thais and many Singaporeans come to Golden Mile Complex for authentic Thai cuisine, including Thai style chicken rice.

Many Thais come to Golden Mile Complex for the Thai chicken rice stall (at the ground level just behind the taxi stand). Thai style chicken rice is similar to Singapore chicken rice as both have Hainanese roots. Like Singapore chicken rice, Thai chicken rice was brought to Thailand by Hainanese immigrants.

The chicken is poached, and dunked in cold water. The chicken is chopped, dressed with soy sauce and oil, served with rice cooked with garlic, pandan leaf, chicken stock and fat, and eaten with a Thai style spicy sourish savoury dipping sauce with taucheo. The addition of taucheo is the key difference between Singapore and Thai chicken rice.

Taucheo was brought to Thailand by Teochew Chinese immigrants. There are 10 million Thais with Teochew ancestry making up 15% of Thailand's population. So, it is not surprising that Thai chicken rice has Teochew influence on top of Hainanese and Cantonese elements.

There's a Thai chicken rice stall across the road at Golden Mile Food Centre that serve a Thai style chicken rice that has been modified to suit Singaporean palates. This is another example of Singapore as Asia's Kitchen, turning foreign dishes into Singapore cuisine.

The chicken and rice are prepared the same way as Singapore chicken rice. The main difference between Thai chicken rice and Singapore chicken rice is in the dipping sauce. The Thai dipping sauce is made with chili, garlic, ginger, Thai lime and taucheo (fermented soy bean) blended together into a tasty savoury umami sourish spicy sauce.

For the dipping sauce, the stall owner May Lee separated the chili, lime, garlic and ginger from the taucheo. Customers who are more familiar with the local taste profile would eat their chicken with the chili dip without taucheo. Customers who prefer the original Thai style dip can add taucheo to the chili dip themselves.

Thai style chicken rice, the Singapore way!

Indonesian Chicken Rice

Link

From Thailand in our north, we fly to Indonesia, Singapore's immediate southern neighbour. It is an archipelago stretching 5,000 kilometres with over 1,000 ethnicities. Indonesians came to Singapore as labourers, craftsmen, traders and hawkers soon after 1819. They were Javanese, Minangkabau, Bugis, Riau Malay, Boyanese, Banjarese and others. Indonesians settled in Kampung Glam and eastwards towards Kallang, Geylang, Geylang Serai, Ubi, Bedok, and Changi.

At the heart is Geylang Serai Market. Indonesians now live all over Singapore but still come back regularly to Geylang Serai Market for marketing and meet up friends and relatives over comfort dishes like Nasi Padang, soto, satay, gado gado, etc at the food centre. During the Muslim Holy Month, the Ramadan Bazaar around Geylang Serai Market is at the heart of the festivities. 

Like the Chinese and Thais, rice is a staple of Indonesians. Chicken is also one of Indonesians' preferred meats. Hence, there are as many chicken and rice dishes as there are ethnic groups in Indonesia.

One chicken rice dish that has conquered the entire Indonesian archipelago is nasi ayam penyet. Not surprisingly, it is also commonly found in Singapore hawker centres.

In its original form, nasi ayam penyet consists of a large piece of spice (e.g. turmeric) marinated chicken boiled in spice (e.g. cloves, cardamon) and stock, air cooled and battered, then fried to a golden brown crisp. Before serving, it is smacked with a mallet or pestle to flatten and break it, making it easy to eat with fingers.

Nasi ayam comes with sambal made with chili pepper, onion, garlic, galangal, fermented shrimp, and cashew nut. Then, there's fried tempe (fermented soy bean cake), tofu, and ulam (salad of raw long bean, cabbage, cucumber and tomato).

In its basic and most common form, all these, the "smashed" chicken, tempe, tofu, sambal and salad are eaten with plain boiled white rice.

Ayam Penyet President serve a pretty definitive version of nasi ayam penyet with defining components of "smashed" fried chicken, fried tempe and tofu, sambal, ulam and plain white rice.

Nasi Ayam Penyet stalls are now found everywhere in Singapore. Every hawker centre would have at least one stall serving the Indonesian dish.

True to Singapore being Asia's kitchen, there are as many tweaks as there are nasi ayam penyet stalls in Singapore. Some ayam penyet stalls serve flavoured rice cooked in chicken stock and oil just like Singapore Hainanese chicken rice. Some stalls serve the fried chicken and sambal with white rice topped with curry and vegetables like curry rice. Some stalls replaced the ulam with achar or pickled vegetables. Some took away the fried tempe and replaced it with prawn crackers. Others use long grain basmati rice instead of the usual starchy white rice. 

It is a developing story as there is still no definitive Singapore nasi ayam penyet at the moment.

From Asia's Kitchen to World's Kitchen

Singapore hawker culture have come a long way from Lau Pa Sat to today's modern hawker centres. Singapore hawker culture is more connected with people's daily lives than ever from young to retirees, students to professionals, blue collar to office workers to businessmen.

At its core, some things have not changed since 1819 - Singapore is still a migrant society and Asia's kitchen.

Singapore hawker culture is welcoming of new people from diverse cultures and backgrounds to join us with their cuisines and ideas. Singapore as Asia's kitchen is always creating new dishes by blending new cuisines with local food culture.

Perhaps, we are also becoming the world's kitchen as Singapore is becoming more a global city.

via GIPHY

To that, I say aye! ✋

Written by Tony Boey on 12 Apr 2022

Permissions:

Image of Wah Kee chicken rice courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Image of coolies courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Image of Thai Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Image of Malay village courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Image of chicken rice stall courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Image of Geylang Serai Market courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Image of Boat Quay courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Image of Cecil Street chicken rice stall courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Image of SGT Kiang courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Image of satay man at Geylang Serai courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Image of Mandarin Hotel courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Image of Swee Kee courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.