Commentary: Should non-Singaporean dishes have a place in hawker centres?
A food writer argues that the growing presence of steak, donburi and other foreign dishes in Singapore's hawker centres is not a threat to local food culture. The real challenge is whether traditional hawkers can afford to keep selling familiar staples amid rising costs and entrenched price expectat
SINGAPORE: Each time food writer Pamelia Chia returns to Singapore, she makes a beeline for a hawker centre for local favourites such as chicken rice, nasi lemak and laksa. Yet her social media feed increasingly features hawkers selling steak, croque monsieur and donburi – dishes that might once have seemed out of place in a hawker centre or coffeeshop.
For aspiring food entrepreneurs, hawker stalls offer a relatively low-cost way to test a business concept. The sisters behind Butter Town began selling shio pan from a hawker stall, partly because startup costs were lower than a cafe's. Their success allowed them to establish a commercial kitchen and partner with Japanese-style cafe chain Hvala. Similarly, former L'Entrecote chefs Visman Selvan and Vera Chionh set up Swag & Sizzle to offer Western dishes at more accessible prices than a conventional restaurant.
This evolution has raised concerns. In 2021, then Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Leong Mun Wai warned that foreign food could come at the expense of local dishes. More recently, MP Jamus Lim argued that coffee shop and hawker centre operators should have a tenant mix that includes a minimum share of local cuisine and halal options, amid concerns that larger foreign chains could crowd out smaller F&B businesses.
Culinary purity has never really existed, Ms Chia writes. Many dishes considered local specialities draw on traditions beyond Singapore's shores: Hainanese chicken rice has roots in Hainan, while roti prata derives from Indian paratha. Over time, such foods adapted to local tastes and became part of everyday life. The same could be said of a more recent addition to Singapore's food scene: mala xiang guo, a dish originating in China that has become a familiar sight in hawker centres.
The more pressing threat, Ms Chia argues, may have less to do with what new stalls sell than with whether traditional hawkers can afford to keep selling what they do. Customers' entrenched expectations of what familiar staples should cost leave limited room for price increases. Some hawkers continue to sell their dishes for less than S$4, a tall order considering rising operating costs. By contrast, a brownie sold at a hawker centre could command more than double that price.
In October, the owners of New Horse Noodles at Chinatown Complex Food Centre announced they were closing their hawker business after five months of running it. The brothers, formerly in finance, shared that they were earning substantially less while working around 70 hours a week. If local stalls close, the problem may lie less with the Korean food stall next door than with the economics of running a traditional hawker business.
A living culture cannot be frozen in time, Ms Chia concludes. A hawker selling donburi does not have to mean the death of chicken rice. It may simply be the latest chapter in a food culture that has always been shaped by the outside world – and has repeatedly found a way to make those influences its own.
