Hawker Fare

Hawker Fare

One thing that visitors to Singapore soon notice about hawker fare is the label each stall displays. Upon first glance, it’s easy to mistake the large letters “A”, “B” and “C” to be some sort of cusine grade in terms of how tasty the meal is. In reality, that grade reflects the hygiene level of the stall, and every eatery here is required by law to display that grade. Grade “A” means the stall’s been given a stamp of approval in terms of cleaniless, and “C” – well, most stalls who get “C”s try very hard not to make their label too conspicuous.:)

Most stalls in foodcourts – being enclosed and air-conditioned as they are – tend to get “A”s, so it’s an uncommon find indeed to see a hawker centre which are open-air with many stalls that get the same grades. One such centre is at Sembawang Hills Estate and along Upper Thomson road. It’s become a frequent place for the both of us to have a quick dinner.

Chinese stir-fry @ Sembawang Hill food centre

This centre isn’t really big – there’re perhaps less than 50 stalls in all, and many of them are closed by dinner time. Still, the stalls that do open still enjoy brisk business from the residents staying at the many landed property units in the estate. The two of us had a Chinese stir-fried dinner there yesterday evening, and here’s the spread we got for $11: a seafood omelette, baby Kai Lan vegetables cooked in oyster sauce, hotplate tofu, all served with rice.

It took just 5 minutes for the first dish to arrive – pretty fast by local standards – and the remaining two dishes followed in minutes. Service was pretty good: the lady took the trouble to make three trips to our table, each time when a new dish was done.

The portions weren’t big – we thought the Kai Lan portions were especially small, and the seafood omelette had an abundance of fish cake and carrot stick pieces and precious little “seafood”. That said, they were well-cooked enough and the Kai Lan and tofu were tasty; and put together, all three dishes were enough to make us pretty full at the end. Our ratings: