“Where can I find the best food in Singapore?” I get this question from overseas visitors all the time. Forget about the fine dining restaurants, or the best cafes in Singapore. If you have limited time during your trip here, just go for the hawker food – it is definitely one of the things to do in Singapore.

I am sure many Singaporeans living in the West are familiar with Jurong West Food Centre. It emerged the winner in the Favourite Hawker Centre category of City Hawker Food Hunt 2010 through an islandwide SMS vote.

I was surprised when I heard the result. It is not easy to win the title of the best Hawker Centre in Singapore when there are so many popular ones like Chomp Chomp, Old Airport Road market, Maxwell Food Centre and Bukit Timah Hawker Centre.

Some of the stalls in Jurong West Food Centre were closed when we went there for dinner. Nevertheless, we still managed to eat quite a lot of food between the five of us. After walking around the hawker centre for a while, I settled on claypot rice.

The best part about having the Chicken Claypot rice from Chinatown Claypot is the short waiting time. If you order the small portion for one person, it takes just five minutes as they have prepared it beforehand. For the bigger portions, it is probably at least twenty to thirty minutes.

It is often said that eating is our favourite pastime. After witnessing the long queue for the fish porridge, I’d like to add on to say that queueing up for food is probably the second hobby. As much as I love food, I think it is crazy to queue up half an hour for a bowl of fish porridge.

Anyway, I was not particularly impressed with the one that we had here. But then again, I am sure there is a reason why people are queuing up for this, maybe I am missing something?

Located just beside the fish porridge stall, Hai Nanyang Curry rice also has a short queue waiting for their curry. I thought that the fish head curry ($6) that we had was quite good.

We were craving for Char Kway Teow and Oyster Omelette that day. And it so happened that there was only one stall selling them, and the food was run-of-the-mill. Thankfully, we had good Kueh Tutu to make up for the disappointment.

The Kueh Tutu stall was extremely popular. When I tweeted that I was having dinner at Jurong West Hawker Centre, everyone replied and asked me to try the Kueh Tutu there.

If you go to Jurong West Hawker Centre, you must try the fish ball noodles there. The Chicken Rice stall near the ATM machine is also worth a mention. It is very easy to spot them as they always have long queues.

In terms of size, Jurong West Food Centre is definitely not as big as Old Airport Road market or Maxwell Food Centre. But there are a few popular stalls that are worth making a trip west.

Is Jurong West Food Centre really the best hawker centre in Singapore? Tell us your top 5 food centres!

Char Kway Teow (#01-22)
Blk 505 Jurong West Street 52
Jurong West Food Centre

Kueh Tutu (#01-11)
Blk 505 Jurong West Street 52
Jurong West Food Centre

Chinatown Claypot Rice (#01-11)
Blk 505 Jurong West Street 52
Jurong West Food Centre

Fish Porridge (#01-40)
Blk 505 Jurong West Street 52
Jurong West Food Centre

Hai Nanyang Hometown Curry Rice (#01-41)
Blk 505 Jurong West Street 52
Jurong West Food Centre

Ming Favourite Shou Shi (#01-33)
Blk 505 Jurong West Street 52
Jurong West Food Centre