5 best restaurants in Singapore

Australia’s a huge place. You wouldn’t guess it though at this tiny gem of a Singapore restaurant. With only 18 seats offering small plates of modern Australian barbequed cuisine, this is intimate, casual and delicious. With its seating looking directly into the kitchen and onto the custom-built four-ton ovens, this is definitely a different dining experience. We recommend the smoked quail’s eggs and grilled squid in paprika dusted butter oil, served in an elegant surrounding of burnt rain-tree counters and charcoal-toned hanging lamps.

20 Teck Lim Road   Tel: +65 (6) 224 3933

One of the best things about Singapore dining is its abundance of cheap, tasty, wholesome hawker food. There really is no end to it. And the best of the best, at least when it comes to Hainanese chicken rice, which is as national a dish as you can find, comes from Tian Tian, set amongst hundreds of other stalls, with communal seating. The simplest of recipes comes served on a plastic plate: chicken, rice, cucumber, coriander, chili sauce and chicken broth. The taste? For less than £2, this has to be one of the best flavour, best value meals on the planet.

Stall 10, Maxwell Food Centre, 1 Kadayanallur Street   Tel:

Ok, it’s not for the squeamish. Having a giant fish head, eyes included, staring up at you from a bowl of curry is certainly a unique experience. It’s also, surprisingly, one of the tastiest (and most popular) you’ll have in Singapore. This famous Little India restaurant has been wowing diners with its signature dish for almost forty years, eaten directly off its equally signature banana leaf settings. Completely unpretentious, we recommended washing down the eyeballs with a glass of Mango Lassi or a Tiger Beer.

Little India Music Centre, Serangoon Rd   Tel: +65 (6) 297 1595

The Marina Bay Sands is a marvel of architecture. Waku Ghin, with its European and Japanese menu, matches its surrounding opulence with a magnificent menu for the distinguished palate. Its 10-course degustation menu is exquisite, and though not cheap, is well-worth the expense, created from the best seasonal produce like Marinated Botan Shrimp with Sea Urchin and Caviar as well as Wagyu with Wasabi and Citrus Soy. It’s not fine dining, it’s the finest.

Marina Bay Sands Hotel   Tel: +65 (6) 688 8507