Some Indian food at Tekka Centre in Singapore
I’m not sure if trying Indian food in Singapore is a must for tourist, but as a comparison to the United States… the Asians in US represent 4.8% of the population as of the 2010 census. Singapore has 9.2% Indians according to Wikipedia. I’m not sure that trying Asian food is a must for tourists when visiting the US… but when you’re just walking around Singapore or taking the subway, it really does seem like Indians are fairly prevalent. At the very least, because Singapore is mostly an ultra modern city, it’s kind of cool to go see some of its neighborhoods which are not just tall buildings. Near the Little India area, you can find the Tekka Centre food court or hawker area.
Around lunch time, Tekka Centre is full of folks dressed up in business casual. It’s kind of insane because it’s usually more than ninety degrees in the middle of July and you still have folks all dressed up. It’s pretty crowded and you have to look a bit for open tables if you don’t want to share. Even though I didn’t really enjoy ginger tea the first time, I thought perhaps different places served ’em differently. So I got it again. They’re all about the same. Either you’re a fan or not.
One of the reasons we wanted to come to Tekka Centre was for the Allauddin Briyani. Yes, Singapore has a ton to offer, and perhaps briyani ain’t your thing on vacation, but we wanted to try it. I think when the concentration of a minority ethnic group is high, you’re more likely to get better food from that particular ethnic group. You know, better Chinese food in NYC compared to Omaha. There was a line and we were fortunate because at some point Allauddin will run out of chicken briyani.
I was also advised that the Heng Gi Duck Rice would be different than the roast duck that I’m normally used to, and since there was a long queue, I figured it was worth a shot as well. Although to be fair, most of the people in this line looked Chinese and not Indian… so it might just be that Chinese folks who work around Tekka want Chinese food and that Heng Gi serves the best within Tekka Centre.
I have to mention that hawker centers are open air and in Singapore that usually means open HOT air. We were drenched while eating the food, which was super delicious. Highly recommend the briyani if you ever are near Tekka Centre. The duck was more of a stewed duck than a roast duck and it was alright. Better than average, although I think in Tekka, you might just be better off trying more Indian food. As always in Singapore though, you wish you had two, three, or four stomachs to be able to eat everything in the hawker centers.
If you get to walk around the area near by Tekka Centre, you’ll get to see some of the more colorful buildings in Singapore and you could even find that Mustafa mall that Bourdain went to on his No Reservations episode where he found some snow globe. I would totally recommend Tekka Centre as part of any roundup of hawker centers in Singapore because it’s just a little different than the other ones.
Posted by Danny on August 29, 2013 at 8:44 pm
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