When it opens later this summer, walking into Urban Hawker will likely be an overwhelming sensory experience. Steam rising from a pot of laksa as the lid is lifted. Vegetables sizzling as they skate across an oily frying pan. Brightly lit food stalls all around, and behind each one a cook preparing a dish perfected over the course of several generations.
Urban Hawker will bear all the hallmarks of one of Singapore’s famed hawker centers—the ubiquitous open-air food courts found throughout the city—apart from one crucial detail: It’s not in Singapore. Instead, Urban Hawker occupies the space inside 135 West 50th Street in Manhattan, just a few blocks from Times Square and over 9,500 miles from the Southeast Asian city-state.
Slated to open in mid-July, the food hall is the latest project from Singaporean entrepreneur, photojournalist, food guru, and past Anthony Bourdain collaborator KF Seetoh. Once the doors open and cooks start serving customers, it’ll be the closest you can get to a genuine hawker center without booking a trip to Singapore.
“Authentic is my only sales pitch,” Seetoh tells Men’s Journal.
Seetoh, who started the Singapore-based food company Makansutra, knows a lucrative business opportunity when he sees one. That’s partly why he’s collaborating with Urbanspace (a group that operates multiple food halls in New York) to launch his new venture in Manhattan—a place he calls “the capital of the world.” But his mission is bigger than just selling food to hungry New Yorkers.
“It’s about preservation,” he says.
Hawker centers can be found all over Singapore. They’re the country’s most iconic culinary tradition, and they date back to the earliest chapters of its history, when the population expanded with an influx of migrants from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, China, and farther afield. To make ends meet, many of these newcomers began cooking and selling the cuisines of their home countries.
“The mall food court that the West is familiar with is just about bringing fast food joints into a little counter,” Seetoh explained. “Hawker centers sell heritage street food—very different from the stuff people burn in barbecues or deep fry on the streets.”
The Singaporean tradition of hawker centers is so important that it was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Unfortunately, like so many great cultural traditions around the world, it is in jeopardy. The first problem, according to Seetoh, is the cost of doing business in Singapore, from “ridiculous” rent rates to expensive supplies.
“Folks expect hawker food to be cheap,” he explains. “But [hawkers] pay the same for a fresh chicken in a chicken rice stall as what Gordon Ramsey would pay for his chicken at the Marina Bay Sands. It’s a wonder that people can still survive.”
Pricey ingredients are one issue, but Seetoh claims “the ultimate cancer” for hawker centers is a shortage of labor.
“Singaporeans are naturally not big on service culture because of who we are,…
