Urban Hawker is a brand-new food Singaporean food hall in Midtown Manhattan. I’ve been a few times and, while the prices are certainly at Midtown level, the food is nonetheless great, and includes some options that have been missing from New York’s Singaporean and Malaysian offerings. Urban Hawker can get quite crowded at peak times, though, so don’t expect easy seating.
On my first visit, my friend who has spent time in Singapore was excited about the fish bihun, a dish of thin rice noodles, thin slices of fish, and greens in a fishy gravy. He was quite happy with this dish, and it did have a lovely umami.
However, I was much more excited by the Singaporean biryani. Biryani is a dish you might associate more with India, but it made its way over to Singapore with many Tamils who moved from India and Sri Lanka to the Straits (Malaysia and Singapore). Straits-Tamil (Mamak) food has been notably missing from New York City until the arrival of Mamak’s Corner in the Urban Hawker center. The composition of this biryani is different to what you would find in India. The rice is still cooked with spices and aromatics, but the meat is added on top at the end in the form of a Malay-style curry, in this case remarkably similar to rendang, a dry coconut and (usually) beef curry typical of Sumatra, Indonesia. For someone like me who loves both rendang and Tamil food, this dish was a masterful fusion of the two cuisines.
Since then, I have also had the laksa, a curry noodle dish with a bunch of different versions across Malaysia and Singapore. This was nyonya-style laksa, with thin rice noodles. It had a wonderful fishy-umami flavor and good moderate spice. The coconut flavor was not particularly strong here, biasing much more towards the flavor of the seafood stock. Very nice
Urban Hawker
135 W 50th St
New York, NY 10020