Newton Circus Hawkers

I love eating at Hawkers. My 1st foodie encounter was at the Makansutra Gluttons Bay Hawkers center. In our first weekend at SG, I took hubby and kids there too and they loved it as well.

Hawkers are open-air food complexes that houses a variety of stalls selling inexpensive food. They are strategically located near housing estates or transportation hubs.

Our home in SG is 10-minutes away from one of the biggest Hawkers Center at the red dot -- the Newton Circus Hawkers center, at Clemenceau Avenue. Circus, being the English word for round-abouts (rotonda for us Pinoys), the Newton Hawkers makes good use of a spacious piece of land in the middle of busy Newton district of Singapore.

We arrived at 6:30 pm and the Newton center is already in full swing.

They have more stalls and spacious, covered dining area. The tables have plastic chips with numbers. When ordering, just tell them your table number and they will surely be able to find you.

Kevin and Kyla's favorite is the BBQ Chicken Wings.

While our favorite is the famous Singapore Chili Crab. Price is marked per 100 grams. We ordered the medium crab. This is good enough for 2-3 persons.

The Cereal Prawn (leff) is another staple favorite. You can order prawns in many different ways-- there is buttered prawn, salt and pepper prawn, stir fried with veggies,  shelled variety etc.

I googled the history of Hawkers in Singapore and found out that Hawkers sprung in the 1950s and 1960s and used to have a reputation for unhygienic food preparation. The government of Singapore upgraded the Hawker centers by implementing strict licensing requirements and enforcing hygiene standards. At the same time, Hawker centers were constructed around the island and equipped with sanitary facilities.

Hawker centers have now become not only a popular dining place for the locals, but also a must-try for the tourists and expats in Singapore!

Gluttons Bay Escapade at Esplanade

It sounds sinful.

In one of my trips, I read about the popular Hawkers district in Singapore and made a mental note that it will definitely enter my to-do list in my next trip. My sister Cindy lives there so I make it a point to meet with her for dinner, together with my work friends every opportunity I have.

And that was how we ended up at Makansuntra at the Gluttons Bay near the Esplanade. Quite a fitting name dont you think? Makan sounds like our Ilocanos' mangan which means eat (or to eat).

Hawkers is definitely for the adventurous lot, gastronomically speaking. Surprise yourself and your taste buds with the variety of authentic Asian fare it has to offer! If you are the snobby-choosy-sosi or pa-sosi type who wouldn't be caught alive eating al fresco and au naturelle' then you can stop reading this now. Hawkers isn't for you. It also reminds me of our local carinderia, the Al Fresco booths at Market-Market or the Tiendesitas Food market. The latter are of course the middle class version.

We went to Makasuntra on a mid-week for dinner and it was alive and bustling by 8 pm.

The going practice at Hawkers is you 'save' a table (you can buy wet tissues for SGD 0.30 and use it to reserve your tables), then make a quick tour among the food booths to find what you like. You can mix and match foodies from different booths.

After checking the food stalls dotting the place, we decided to line up at a stall named Boon Tat Street. We ordered their specialties: the grilled spicy Sting Ray and the Deep Fried Baby Squid. Add a bit of Yang Cheow fried rice for good measure.

We also decided to check out another booth and ordered Chicken Satay (another version of our own BBQ) and at the far end was another best seller Hokkien Prawn Mee (fried spciy noodles with monggo sprouts and generous dash of shrimps). There was a separate booth for local drinks and the canned variety and I went for sugarcane juice with lemonade. All these for unbelievably low price! I was looking for an Indian Curried Samosas but was disappointed when Cindy told me it cant be found at Makansuntra. There were also the famous cereal prawns and black pepper crab, chili crab and all sorts of crabby delights but we decided to pass.

Having used to Dada's spicy sisig and kilawin, the spiciness didn't bother me at all. The fried baby squid was the night's favorite and despite complaining that we seemed to have ordered a lot, all the dishes were swiped clean anyhow!

For me, the fun about Hawkers is that despite Singapore being a cosmopolitan world city, Hawkers bring a glimpse of the true local vibe beneath the glamour. It is all about Asian food in its most genuine self, night out with friends, fresh air and chit chats less the glossied ambience.

It is truly Asia!