Singapore’s Other Chicken Rice

When people in Singapore talk about the cost of lunch, they talk about chicken rice.

In August, the Department of Statistics had a plate at S$4.23, seven cents more than a year earlier. Hawker centres, coffee shops, and food courts are blended into that one figure. On October 7, Dr Tan See Leng, the minister responsible for those figures, told Parliament the department does not break the price out by kind of stall.

A busy stall can charge more than S$4.23. The official table has no column for the difference. The lunch that matches the average is a centre full of people who live nearby, at the hour they usually show up.

On July 28, Michelin published its Bib Gourmand list of good everyday meals. Three of the new names are neighbourhood stalls.

Jia Xiang, in Redhill Market, cooks mee siam from a family recipe. If you are staying in town, Redhill is the closest of the three. Further east, Rajarani Thosai at Tampines Round Market makes thosai and appam, with close to twenty fillings. Tian Nan Xing, at Kaki Bukit 511 Market, serves minced pork noodles. The family cooking them is in its third and fourth generation. One stall is a lunch. Three would be a commute.

A cup of kopi or teh with condensed milk averaged S$1.44 in that same August table. Drink it in the morning, before the heat turns every queue into a decision.

The cheap plate depends on an old lease.

Debbie Yam expected a corporate career after her business degree. She runs her great-grandfather’s fish-head noodle and stir-fry stall instead. He started it on the street in 1946 and moved it into a government centre in 1978, and the lease she still holds is about S$400 a month. She is at the stall about 70 hours a week. In an ABC story published on October 10, she said bidders for other stalls are offering S$4,000. About a third of hawkers are still on subsidised rents, some as low as S$192.

“If the money doesn’t make sense anymore,” she said, “then there is no amount of passion that can make me drive the project even for another 10 years.”

The government puts the median age of a hawker at 60.

The National Environment Agency, which runs the centres, told the ABC that ingredients are just over half the cost of a stall. A higher rent has to fit into what is left. Kenny Ngoo, 32, has sold Korean-inspired fried chicken and rice for a decade, at S$8 to S$11 a plate, on a rent of about S$3,000. At the centres required to keep a cheap meal on the menu, hawkers told the ABC that meal can be S$3.50. Pay the figure written on the sign. S$3.50 and S$11 are both hawker prices. They come out of different rents.

Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice, at Maxwell Food Centre, has been on the Bib Gourmand list for all ten years the Michelin Guide has covered Singapore. That is the chicken-rice queue. Hill Street Tai Hwa Pork Noodle, at Block 466 Crawford Lane, is the only hawker stall with a star, and it has held one since 2016. Hong Lim’s Tai Wah Pork Noodle is a different shop. The names look alike if you are reading fast. Tai Hwa’s own site says the Crawford Lane stall is closed on the first and third Monday of the month. Check before you go.

One of those bowls is enough. The next meal is the centre closest to where you are sleeping, at the price on the card.