Newton Circus Hawker Centre

I visited the newly-renovated Newton Circus Hawker Centre yesterday to have dinner. The old Newton Circus Hawker Centre has long been famous for their hawker food fare, thus attracting many tourists to take a short ride on the train or bus from town, to experience Singapore's very own al fresco dining. But I took a short 10-15mins walk from Orchard Road to Newton, burn some fat before loading myself with more grease.

The revamped hawker centre looks brighter and much cleaner than the earlier. Then again, when dining at a hawker centre in Singapore, cleanliness of the environment should never cross your mind. Very much like Zion Road Riverside Hawker Centre, Tiong Bahru Hawker Centre and Adam Road Hawker Centre (learn more by simply searching on Foodlane.sg), the stalls are all orientated in a circular fashion surrounding the sheltered and al fresco sitting areas, which is distinctly different from old fashioned 'back-to-back stalls' concept.

The minute I stepped into the hawker centre, I was approached by many hawkers touting for business. I decided to walk around and check out the stalls available. I immediately realised that the 80% of the stalls in the hawker centre are 'peng kang' (BBQ) food. These food are popular here since they can usually whip up a decent platter of chilli crab, black pepper crab, sambal 'kangkong', 'la-la', sambal BBQ stingray and 'sotong', some termed 'Uniquely Singapore' but I think otherwise. There are around 3 or 4 stalls that sell fried carrot cake and 'hao jian' fried oysters, 2 or 3 selling fried hokkien noodles and fried 'kway teow', 2 stalls selling prawn noodles, 1 stall selling sliced fish soup and some selling desserts. It also caught my attention that the beverage stalls were all bearing the same 'It's Time' signage, an obvious sign of monopoly? I later realised the same for some off the 'peng kang' stalls as well. You can find every popular Singapore hawker food here. When I was scouting for a good stall to order, I came across a Caucasian and his female 'escort' making payment for their 4 'peng kang' dishes. The bill came up to S$120!!! That is utterly insane! How can that be possible!? The stall owners are obviously trying to make the tourist pay more! That is no way to do a business! Hawker food is supposed to be cheap and good! Why pay hundreds here when you can have better food in air-conditioned restaurants? That deterred me from ordering any 'peng kang', since 'peng kang' food usually taste similar anywhere, though I believe there are some that are really better. I ordered a fish soup, prawn noodle soup and my favourite 'sinfully' 'hao-jian'.


In conclusion, Newton Circus Hawker Centre is a good place for the not too adventurous tourists to experience most of the local food fare in one place. Those who are more adventurous can venture out to the heartlands where there are other local food (eg. frog's leg porridge and 'chwee kway') and some even better, for more information, see Foodlane.sg. I personally do not mind touting, but it can be rather unpleasant at times. I find the price slightly above the average and one need to be wary of unscrupulous businessmen. Nothing much to comment about the quality of the food, but I have had better.

Comments

Laurens said…
raining then is song boh for them liaos
WILLIAM TAN said…
run under shelter lor
anyway no big deal lah
not the best place for hawker peng kang