The MOST AUTHENTIC Hawker Food Center in America

Oh my gosh, how do I navigate this thing, man? This is even better than the last time I got this on Geylang Road. This is one of the best chicken satays I've ever had in New York City. Chili crab, are you ready for your examination? You see this? I'm using the head as a bowl. Hello, Uncle. OK, Uncle, what's up? What do we got here? Mr. Fried Rice. Uncle, thank you. Good job, man. Thank you. Auntie, Uncle, hey. Auntie, one chocolate. Chicken rice. Chicken rice, Auntie. What started just as a dream of the late Anthony Bourdain has now become a reality. There is an authentic Singaporean hawker center in New York City. I'm talking about chicken rice, skate wings, chili crab, beef rendang, satay. Singaporean aunties and uncles cheffing it up. Now, does it feel like a hawker stall? Well, I'm going to eat at every single spot and hopefully I'll find out. So hit that like button and let's go. All right, everybody, before I show you the best hawker food in New York City, I got to give a big shout out to our sponsor, G Fuel. It is not just for gamers and it is not like every other energy drink out there. I personally like G Fuel because they have so many different crazy flavors. Also, they're sugar free. I mean, if you look on the back of this can, it's made with green tea extract, turmeric extract, tart cherry, blueberry, broccoli, kale. That's a superfood. And on the back of the powder tubs, you actually have real fruit extract. I'm talking about pomegranate, pineapple, apple, orange, grapeseed, grapefruit, raspberry, strawberry, watermelon, lemon, fruit, melon, cantaloupe. There's cantaloupe in these. Currently, right now, my favorite flavor is yuzu slash. That's the one I'm drinking. However, after I showed the miso ramen one, the miso ramen one on my Instagram and TikTok, people were going crazy. So I'm about to try it right now. Naruto miso ramen. 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And then we're going to let you know which ones are our favorite. Hey, starting off, you know, we got to start at Hainan Jones for the iconic chicken rice. All right. Here we got the steamed Hainan chicken. Oh, all right. You know, the rice is going to be flavorful. It's very juicy, very Singaporean style right here. Oh, that is super good, man. I got to pour a little bit of hot sauce on there. All right. Here I have the roasted chicken and rice. As you can see, man, this has the brown skin on top. That is the mark of a good roasted one. They make it good here. As you guys may have seen in other videos, I do love chicken and rice. It's one of my favorite dishes. I could eat this three or four times a week. And this one, man, they made it to the T. It is juicy, just like the Singaporean style. And just to have an authentic version in New York, that's amazing. All right. Our second spot. We're about to be trying the Hokkien prawn mee at Prawnaholics. Listen, I got to be honest. The prawn mee is a dish I've had in Singapore, but really only once or twice in my life. And this is a lot of pork and seafood, which those are two ingredients that usually aren't in the same dish. Yeah. High quality seafood, high quality pork belly. I'm excited. This is a very, very authentic hawker style dish, man. And it's very hard to find around America. If you guys have never been to Singapore, trust me, this is more of a deep cut dish. And you guys got to try it here when you come to urban hawker. Put a little bit of Singaporean hot sauce on there. All right. For our third spot, we got to get the original bee hon, a.k.a. rice noodle here at White Restaurant. Here I have some authentic seafood bee hoon. Bee hoon is actually Hokkien dialect for mee fun. Which is rice noodles here. And guys, this is a very much a cafe style food in America. When you think of cafe food, you're thinking about avocado toast. But in Singapore, they take it to the next level. Seafood noodles, baby. Whoo. Bee hoon. Oh, that's an everyday noodle right there. Egg rice noodle. Nice, creamy, kind of starchy, milky, murky chicken broth. And if you want to know how to say like hao cheur or good eats or ho sik in Hokkien, it's ho cheur. And for our fourth spot, we're about to be trying the authentic sambal stingray here at Mr. Fried Rice. That is Mr. Fried Rice right here. That's that's the man himself. Oh, no, no. Singapore stingray. Yeah, sambal BBQ. Just like. Guys, the last time I had sambal stingray was at a hawker. So I think it was a old airport way. Maybe this is the dish that everybody has been talking about. Yo, that sambal sauce is kicking. Feeling all the spices. Mr. Fried Rice, uncle. Thank you. Good job, man. Thank you. Authentic, delicious stingray in Manhattan. That's kind of crazy. Chili crab. Are you ready for your examination? What you guys are looking at is an authentic chili crab from here at Urban Hawker, guys. Like they said, they got black pepper crab. They got white pepper crab. But this is the classical style that everybody goes to Geylang Road just to get. I've did this several times in Singapore. I'm telling you, it never disappoints. I was super surprised to see this, Andrew. Are you surprised to see this? Yo, at a hawker stall just across the street where you can get satay, you can get chicken rice, you can get everything here. Oh my goodness, I'm going to crack this open. Dave, I got to give you some of this this crab, crab juice right here, because I'm going to use the crab head as a bowl. Aha, put the rice in there. No, I'm telling you, Andrew, everybody here that works here is like straight from Singapore. And this is like something that's almost unbelievable. It's almost like a cultural food museum because you're going to get an authentic Singaporean hawker stall experience in the middle of Manhattan. We're talking about like we're smack dab in the middle. Let's just say the top is 100. The bottom is zero. Where we're at in the Lower East Side, we're at the 50s right now. I would say that this one is just a notch spicier than the last one we had in Singapore. That's why I do appreciate though. Oh, the flavor is kicking. And we have the fried manto. This is oftentimes the traditional thing you'll eat with it. It is the fried white bun. She's going to dip it in that. David is super hot. Look at that sauce on the manto. Let's go. This is even better than the last time I got this on Gay Long Road. Yo, where is Ronnie Chang? Just come to Urban Hawker for this. If you just came here and got this in the chicken rice, that would be a fantastic A-tier start to your Singaporean hawker stall like cyclone journey. You see this? I'm using the head as a bull. That's what I do after I defeat my enemies. All right, guys, I think that Urban Hawker is an excellent place for lunch. If you're just a tourist or obviously if you work in midtown, this is going to be a great like dope little escape from your office into Singapore for 20, 30 minutes, an hour. You get back into the office. But obviously for dinnertime, Andrew, this is going to be a great opportunity for friends to come check out all the things. You know, maybe you come with like seven people to each get two things. Now you're trying 14 things. What I love about hawker stall food is that it's never short on flavor, but oftentimes they can make the food light enough where you can eat it for lunch. It's not going to slow you down. Obviously, chili crab is maybe more of a sit down dinner food. But man, it's just cool to have everything all in one place in New York City. All right. So far, six spot. I'm outside of Ashes Burnet. And here I got the roti can. This is a traditional kind of egg omelette on a roll. And then we also have like a brisket sandwich here. All right. So this single roti can is actually a curry beef egg omelette. They're eating it around Singapore. I've actually seen this before on Instagram, but I've never had it in real life. So this is like all those Instagram videos come to life. That's what I love about this. That is so good. That curry is coming through and it's egg and it's warm and it's soft. And I love it. Here we got a really interesting item. This is the rendang beef brisket sandwich. Now, as you guys know, Singapore was like a British colony. So it has a lot of like Western influence already there. So this is one of those Western influence items that is actually from Singapore, though, sort of like a Hong Kong cafe type style of food or maybe like a most burger where it's like an Asian version of something American. And I love beef rendang, so I'm excited. Authentic rendang flavor. You know, beef rendang is one of my favorite dishes. And with the bed of fries, yo, something I never thought I'd have. All right. So our next spot is a Filipino restaurant. It's not necessarily a hawker stall, but still Southeast Asian. We're about to try the crispy pata. Yo, Chef Anton here is bringing the crispy pata. Did I order the Uber XL? This is the escalate of crispy patas right here. Yo, this is crazy. I'm lucky to be here side by side alongside the Singaporean hawker vendors. Oh, my gosh. How do I navigate this thing, man? So right here, we have the crispy pata, which is normally the front ham hock of the pig. So this one, I guess, guy is braised for four hours. Then we deep fry for about 12. And no, not about exactly 11 minutes. All right. Should I just do it with my hands? You can do it with your hands too. You can do anything in one. You can hear that crispy skin on top. I might have to shatter it, but guys, this is not really hawker stall food, but it is restaurant food. And as you guys know, Filipino family parties are like a staple and they're so fun. So this is this is a party starter right here, man. As they would say in Tagalog, so sarap. All right. I'm going to pour a little sauce here. Put it on the rice. Make a little bite. All right. So here I got some authentic nanya laksa with rice noodles and nanya for those people who are not familiar. It's kind of like a ancient mixture between like Malay and Chinese people. Right. Exactly. And what do we have here? These are my grandmother's noh hiang meatballs. We call them meatballs. What kind of meat is it? It means pork with water chestnut, shrimp, onions wrapped in bean curd skin. There's something crunchy inside of there. Water chestnut, water chestnut. Yeah, water chestnut. Hey, guys, I might just also throw it in my laksa, too. Anything particular about the laksa? This is we cooked it in a shrimp broth and it's a light coconut, coconut, coconut cream, like a light curry, basically. You can see all that seasoning sticking to the noodle right there. Daisy is your mother. Daisy is my mother. Shout out to Daisy. OK, our next spot is Smoke and Joe, and they're actually serving what is called Western Hainanese food. And it's actually comes from the Hainanese immigrants moving to Singapore and seeing that there's no Western style food. So them creating their own style. So it's like a old school fusion, not a new school fusion of East and Western flavors. Let's check it out. What I really like about spots like this and food like this is that it really is a well thought out fusion. And sometimes when people try to just throw dishes together that have never met before, it can be kind of weird. But here they've had a lot of time to perfect it. So I like it. It kind of reminds me of like Hong Kong cafe style food. All right. So as you may know, there are all different types of people in Singapore, namely a lot of people of Chinese ancestry, Indian ancestry and Malay ancestry. And this spot, Mamak's Corner, is serving Indian Singaporean food. Most of the Indian influence is from South India. So I'm pretty excited to try it. All right. Here's the lamb biryani. Just like it is in Singapore and South India. Hmm. It's actually not as spicy as I thought. But just as flavorful. Let me get some of these pickled. Yo, dishes like this really just remind you how much of a multicultural society Singapore is. Shout out to Lee Kuan Yew. Oh, fresh off the grill. So this is a chicken satay with a peanut sauce, rice cake and cucumber. Right, guys, we're here at Paddy NYC. That's how I say it? Yes, Paddy NYC. Paddy NYC, the Malay spot. Honestly, right now, I just feel like I'm over at Newton Plaza in Singapore. Guys, I can tell. Look at the grill marks on this chicken satay, man. You kind of need it to look like it's covered with stuff. That's how you know it's good. That was exactly what I was looking for. Oh, my God. We can see all the spices on it that honestly do look like a little bit like hair. It's just spices and ginger. Don't worry about it. But man, that's delicious. And I love how the peanut sauce is chunky and dark. And it's got these, I'm not going to lie, I forgot the vegetable, but this white one is very popular over there. This is one of the best chicken satays I've ever had in New York City. All right, we're here at Yum Yubu to take it out of Southeast Asia for a second and back up to East Asia. Here we have the Korean Yubus. And, you know, this is obviously similar to the Japanese style, the fried tofu pockets, but, you know, they do it a little differently. So let me try this one. Yo, guys, the Korean version of this, I got to say, is really, really good. And honestly, they're the ones popping up spots that are only serving this item, so it's got to be good. Salmon Yubu with a little bit of wasabi on top. Great snack if you want something sweet and dense and rice filled. Aren't you guys? That does it for our very first crawl at Midtown's Urban Hawker Singaporean Hawker Stall experience. I'm telling you, I was blown away by the authenticity. I never expected something to be like this. And then for them to bring in so many people from Singapore here to recreate that authentic flavor and experience, it was super dope. I highly recommend it. Yo, guys, given the quality, this spot is actually super, super affordable. Also, given that it is in the middle of New York City. I mean, that crab over there was only $48. And actually, listen, for a Hawker Stall dish, you might think that's kind of expensive. But for Dungeness crab, it's not. So definitely come here and try it. This is a Singapore sling. This is the most famous drink mix that they have in Singapore. Like I said, guys, nowadays, some people travel, some people are not traveling again, you know, because of whatever happened over the past couple of years. So whether you can or you can't or you just want that Asian vibe, come to Urban Hawker Midtown, throw up the map. Walaui!