Hawker food makes it big in New York

THE smell of roasted robusta coffee beans wafting through the air. The unmistakable clangs of the wok. The ease with which Singlish flows from customer to cashier. There are even tray-return stations.

Welcome to Urban Hawker – a slice of Singapore, right in Times Square in New York City. The 15,000-sq-ft food court is located in the middle of Manhattan and is the latest and biggest addition to the Singapore food scene that has been quietly growing in the city in the past few years.

Hawker food and snacks from both Singapore and its neighbouring countries have been growing in popularity. Street markets such as the famous Queens Night Market regularly feature gems such as Ramly burgers and Indonesian kue putu. Earlier this year, The New York Times singled out laksa as a “a slurpable noodle soup” that “may rise in prominence in the United States”. It helps too, that the population of South-east Asians, including Malaysians, Thais, and Indonesians, more than doubled between 2000 and 2019, noted a Pew Research Centre report.