Taking A Singapore Food Tour To Find The Singaporean Cuisine

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Singapore has amazing food, restaurants, and cafes, and a Singapore food tour is a great way to discover the city’s top spots and the dishes you must try. I fell in love with the food in the small country, although I would never have tried some of the dishes if not for the food tour. Sadly, I picked the wrong company, and we were rushed through the tour in barely two hours.

This article will cover some of the dishes on the food tour and some of my other recommendations for where to eat when visiting Singapore.

Table of Contents

Singapore Food Tour Overview

I had no idea what to expect from my Singapore food tour. Surprisingly, it was only my second food tour in Asia, after the Hanoi food tour. I knew Singapore had good food, if only because of the world-famous Michelin-starred street food vendor, but I hadn’t even bothered to research which dishes I needed to try.

Twice, I’d planned to visit Singapore while I was in Malaysia, but it wasn’t until my last-minute decision to spend Christmas in Singapore instead of Vietnam that I finally visited the country, learned its history, and (perhaps most importantly), tried the Singaporean cuisine. In the end, the food became one of my favorite highlights in Singapore.

Normally, I recommend doing a food tour as your first activity in a new country. Unfortunately, we arrived on Christmas Eve after the tour started, and there was no tour on Christmas Day. So we took the tour on the third day of our five days in Singapore.

My Singapore food tour started at 9:30 a.m. (before it got too hot) outside the metro station in Chinatown, about a mile to the west of the world-famous Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Our tour was relatively small – the only other guests were a family of four from Los Angeles. For some reason, despite the website stating the tour should last 2.5 to 3 hours, it ended in just two hours. In those two hours, we were served far more food than we could consume in that timeframe. We were given barely any information about the dishes, and I had to do my own research after the tour.

Singaporean Cuisine

Bee Cheng Hiang

The first stop on our Singapore food tour was Bee Cheng Hiang, a shop that opened in Singapore back in 1933. They produce the best bakkwa – square sheets of barbecued pork jerky with its origin in China. More recently, Bee Cheng Hiang introduced a bacon-style “gourmet bakkwa” and even chili bakkwa for the local palate.

We each chose between beef or pork bakkwa and were given a small portion of our selection. I thought we’d get more, but now knowing how much food was to come on the tour, I’m happy with the small portion. However, I still need to go back sometime to try the other flavors and styles.

Nanyang Old Coffee

On the way to the next stop, our guide spoke about the history of Chinatown and Singapore in general, going into detail about how the Dutch, British, Chinese, and Japanese all left their mark on the Country. Of course, that was readily noticeable in the restaurants and dishes available in the city.

The next stop tied in well with the history of Singapore. Nanyang Old Coffee opened in 1973, based on the much older tradition of hawking coffee on the streets of Singapore in the 1930s. We each received a plate of toast with butter and kaya (coconut jam), and our choice of kopi. Kopi is the Singaporean way of saying coffee, and there are many different ways of ordering – hot or cold, with condensed milk or evaporated milk, more or less sugar, etc.

I opted for one of the more unusual drinks – iced yuan yang, a blend of coffee and tea similar to iced cham in Malaysia, but with a different ratio. Although the coffee in SE Asia is mostly robusta beans, it was still nice, and I particularly liked the toast.

Chinatown Maxwell Food Market

Next, Jan took us to the Maxwell Food Market in Chinatown, a place we had visited ourselves a couple days earlier. The food court is similar to a hawker center, but not the same. Aside from serving really good food, prices were low, which was a blessing as Singapore is one of the most expensive Asian countries.

We had quite a feast at this market, including three dishes and a beer. Our first dish was Hainanese chicken rice -poached chicken and seasoned rice. The second dish was fried Hokkien noodles – prawns, squid, eggs, and noodles. Finally, we tried a popiah oyster cake, which was supposed to be the highlight of the tour, but not something I really enjoyed.

Of course, the tour also served beer to everyone, which I didn’t appreciate as I don’t like beer. But that was to be expected from a company started by pub crawl guides. That company’s tours tend to lean toward more alcoholic drinks than high-quality food.

The quality of the dishes wasn’t great, but it was nice to try them nonetheless. More than anything, it was good to try dishes I might never have ordered otherwise. That’s my favorite part of food tours. I’m usually quite adventurous, and I’ll choose random items off a menu I can’t read, but that doesn’t guarantee I will pick good items. Then again, the tour was more about trying “shocking” dishes rather than delectable options.

Chinatown Complex Hawker Center

Finally, we made it to the climax of the tour. If I thought we had a feast at the Maxwell Center, I hadn’t seen anything. We didn’t finish all the food at the penultimate stop, and we barely made it through half the dishes at the hawker center. Here’s what was served:

Egg prata – an Indian roti in a Singaporean style, with curry on the side.
Popiah – spring rolls with radishes, eggs, cucumber, and peanuts that aren’t deep-fried (deep-fried would be a spring roll).
Kuey pie tie (Peranakan dessert golden cup) – a small pastry shell filled with radishes, chili, prawns, eggs, and a savory sauce.
Chendol – a Peranakan dessert with shaved ice, red beans, green beans, gelatin, coconut milk, and palm sugar.

I was truly fascinated by the hawker stands. One stand in particular had a few dozen people waiting in line, and our guide said there were days when the line was many times longer. Nearly all the food was Asian, particularly focusing on popular dishes in Singapore. As usual, the best places served just one single dish.

Unfortunately, we only had 20 minutes at the hawker center to try all four dishes. We tasted them, but there was no way we could finish all the food. I liked the items, particularly the kuey pie tie. I just wish the tour was better paced so we could properly enjoy the dishes.

Other Great Meals and Restaurants in Singapore

The dishes on the Singapore food tour were just a fraction of what we ate during our 4 days in the country. We very quickly learned that Singapore is super expensive, so we were limited in our budget. But this was Christmas after all, and a new country for each of us, so we splurged a little while balancing our budget with some cheaper meals.

Oriental Chinese Restaurant 东方美食

One of my favorite meals in Singapore turned out to be one of the cheapest. One night, we were wandering around Chinatown and stumbled upon a place with the most generic name – Oriental Chinese Restaurant. The first thing that caught my attention on the menu was the orange chicken. Considering I practically lived on orange chicken from Panda Express when I was growing up, I had to order it.

If you’ve ever watched Joshua Weissman on YouTube, you’ve probably seen his channel “But Better,” where he takes common dishes from fast-food restaurants and makes them better at home. That’s exactly what this restaurant did. Simply put, it was the best orange chicken I’d ever eaten! The portion was massive, and it only cost us about $4 USD.

Black Tap Craft Burgers & Beers

On Christmas Eve, we ended up at the Marina Bay Sands. We decided to splurge on dinner and went to Black Tap Craft Burgers for their award-winning burgers and shakes. My bacon cheeseburger was fantastic, as if I was sitting in New York and not SE Asia. I was just sad the CrazyShake I wanted wasn’t available.

We paid $53 USD for my burger, a salad for Vanesa, a side of chips and pico de gallo, and two cocktails to celebrate Christmas Eve. That’s super expensive for a meal in Southeast Asia, but cheap compared to the other restaurants at the Marina Bay Sands, or compared to Western countries.

Pasta Fresca Da Salvatore

One more restaurant to mention is Pasta Fresca da Salvatore on the Boat Quay. We were craving a pizza one night and ended up there. While most of the restaurants and bars along the quay looked overpriced and had several people out front tempting customers in with cheap cocktails, our little Italian restaurant was the opposite. No one was out front luring us in, and the prices were reasonable.

I’m really glad we ended up there, as the quality of the food was fantastic. Our pizzas were properly Italian-style using high-quality ingredients. We paid $21 USD for a pizza and two lemonades.

Booking a Food Tour in Singapore

If you’re looking for a good food tour in Singapore, avoid global, corporate companies like the one that runs “clandestine” food tours. Instead, book a good, local company such as Monster Day Tours, or find a private tour operator. Considering the price of food in Singapore, a food tour there is one of the better value tours in Southeast Asia…as long as the money is going to locals and not to an investor-backed corporation.

Taking a Singapore Food Tour to Discover the Singaporean Cuisine

Singapore Food Tour Overview