Chinatown Hawker Center

I was out dining with friends on Friday at Chinatown Hawker Center. For those who are not in the know, hawker centers are places or locations where there are many food stalls selling cheap and good local food. (Well, there are also some which are cheap and not good, as well as expensive but good, and expensive yet not good.)

Nowadays, the new breed of hawkers go for exotic foreign food. So, you will also find Thai food, Japanese food, Korean food, Western food... at these centers as well.

I wrote about hawker centers a few months back. Have a read to understand more about hawker centers, by clicking Here

The hawker center is a good place to go to when you want something cheap and fast. Some of the stalls open for breakfast and some stalls open until the wee hours in the morning. So, the locals can eat at any time of the day, as long as they know which hawker center is still open.

The Chinatown Hawker Center is quite a big place, and if you were there for the first time, you could get lost easily while checking out the numerous stalls selling all kinds of food. You will find that you are spoilt for choice, and you may have a difficult time deciding what you want for dinner – unless you have already decided what you want to eat.

My friends and I knew what we want to have for dinner. The next thing was to decide which of the stalls to patronize, for there are many stalls doing the same kind of dishes. We decided on a ‘zhi char’ stall that we haven’t tried before. ‘Zhi Char’ is a local term loosely translated into ‘cook by stir fry’. As the name implied, most of the dishes would be stir fried.

Anyway, the reason we picked this particular stall was, they were always very busy – an indication that the food must be good. Then there were newspaper clippings about the stall on their signboard – indicating that some foodie or bloggers must have patronized it and given their approval.

Here’s what we ordered.

Steamed Fish Head with bean paste.

Seafood Roll.

Fried Kangkong with Cutter Fish, stir fried with dried prawn.

Bitter Gourd with Spare Ribs in black bean paste.

Were they any good then? Here is an indication.

You will noticed there were some leftovers. That is because, we couldn’t squeeze in any more food. I, for one don’t believe in wasting food, but if I eat the leftovers, my tummy will explode.

The Seafood Roll was very good. We all enjoyed that. The Kangkong with Cutter Fish was good. A generous amount of dried prawn and not too salty. The same goes for the bitter gourd with Spare Ribs. The fish head was comparable to the other stores. Overall, they are slightly a cut above the rest. Would I go back to the stall? Sure, if they are not too busy. I am not one who would queue for a table.

Here are some shots of part of the hawker center.

The rush period is over and they are slowly packing up for the day. This is one side of a section we were in. Now if you multiply that by twenty times, that will roughly be the size of the Chinatown Hawker Center.