Stalls serving nasi lemak (coconut milk-infused rice served with condiments) are a dime a dozen in Singapore, but the only one using long-grained basmati rice is this Adam Road Food Centre standby, a rumored favorite of the Sultan of Brunei. Have your fluffy rice with otak-otak (grilled fish cake with spices), fried chicken wings, fried kuning fish, or even better, all of the above. Given its ever-present snaking queue, budget about an hour for waiting.

There are a number of great food centers in Singapore, but none as famous as this one. Opened in 1971, Newton Food Centre has been occasionally criticized for being overpriced, yet the sheer variety of street food here still makes it a worthy destination for food-loving tourists. Among the many highly recommended stalls to explore, Hup Kee Fried Oyster Omelette and Soon Wah Fishball Kway Teow Mee are sure to delight.

The crew at San Shu Gong call the place a private diner, but there is nothing secretive about this difficult-to-book restaurant in Geylang. In fact, the restaurant is so renowned for well-executed Teochew fare that guests usually book their next meal before they’re done eating. If you’re lucky enough to snag a reservation, order the deep-fried sea cucumber, Teochew raw crabs with roe, pan-fried oyster omelet, and the first-rate pig’s stomach soup. Good luck with the booking.

At the intersection of Joo Chiat and Dunman Road, a kopitiam named Tin Yeang Restaurant buzzes to life at the crack of dawn as the Mohgans start flipping one of the city’s most talked-about roti prata (South Indian flatbread). While you could have the flatbread with egg or cheese, most prefer to savor it plain with a side of fish curry and a splash of spicy sambal.

While options for steamy bowls of prawn me (prawn noodle soup) are plentiful throughout Singapore, make the trek to Da Dong Prawn Noodle (founded circa 1966) on Joo Chiat Road, run by second-generation hawker Watson Lim. The version here is singular. Just try the pork rib prawn me with thick rice vermicelli, buoyed by a light and punchy shrimp broth, to see what the hype is all about.

Sushi Kimura offers a delicious take on the Japanese seasons through the lens of a sushi chef. Chef-owner Tomoo Kimura has decades of sushi-crafting experience under his belt, and it shows: From his sushi-pressing choreography to the artisan ingredients he espouses (including made-in-Kyoto Fujisu vinegar and Aritaya-brewed organic Hokkaido soy sauce) to his parade of in-season Japanese small plates and sushi (think: boiled shirako with ponzu and wakame, as well as the winter sushi delicacy of Hokkaido shark skin halibut). Since this place snagged a Michelin star, there’s been plenty of competition for seats.

Hardly any laksa stalls still make the effort to fan and coax charcoal flames to properly simmer laksa anymore, making Sungei Road the best bowl in the city almost by default. The broth, thick rice noodles, cockles, and fishcakes are perfumed with a light whiff of smoke. It’s almost a sin to leave any of the prawn- and coconut-enriched soup wallowing in the bowl.

Despite the onslaught of new restaurants, French fine dining stalwart Les Amis continues to pack in the upwardly mobile crowd. Its allure? The parade of caviar- and truffle-crowned classical French dishes prepared by executive chef Sebastien Lepinoy. From the a la carte and classic tasting menu, the French chef’s most indulgent course yet is the thickly sliced whole-roasted Vendee foie gras served in a moated pool of truffle and celeriac consomme. The group also owns Tarte by Cheryl Koh in the same building, in case you want to fill up on some of the city’s best French tarts for breakfast.

Farm-to-fork is a distant dream for much of land-scarce Singapore, but it’s the main attraction at Open Farm Community in Dempsey Hill, where a 3,000-square-foot plot provides herbs like basil and makrut lime for the restaurant. Head chef Oliver Truesdale-Jutras also works with a community of local growers for dishes like his Pulau Ubin-farmed barramundi, which is delivered within six hours of harvest, served steamed in dashi butter with black rice, furikake, cassava, and butterfly pea flower from the property, as well as pea shoots and peas from local farms.

This gourmet emporium in Dempsey (owned by tycoon Christina Ong) retails some of the finest artisanal food products money can buy in Singapore. Think: French caviar, wild-caught sea bass, and marbled Australian wagyu, with a Grandiflora boutique and a fuss-free bistro (don’t miss the spanner crab pasta) thrown in for good measure. It’s a fine destination if you’re grabbing ingredients to do some cooking, but an even finer destination if you’d like to just window-shop.

For Peruvian fare, you really can’t do better than the awe-inspiring spread at this rustic spot set in a former barrack in Dempsey. Helmed by husband-and-wife chef team Daniel and Tamara Chavez, the menu is packed with delightful Peruvian hits — and some tacos — like ceviches (try the ceviche clásico), arroz chaufa (Peruvian Chinese fried rice), and a Peruvian fisherman’s soup. 

Welcome to this 9,000-square-foot colonnaded bar of grand Art Deco proportions, with one of the world’s largest gin collections neatly displayed in a tower, doled out by a cadre of gin specialists and head bartender Lidiyanah “Yana” K. Add to that a Champagne room with a collection of 250 varieties of Champagne and a menu of gin–based cocktails (try the Atlas G&T), and you have one of the city’s most impressive cocktail bars.

The Auld Alliance is a gentlemen's club-like whiskey bar tucked away on the second floor of the Rendezvous Hotel Gallery. It has one of the world's most extensive collections of rare and old bottlings, and an especially deep lineup of much-coveted Japanese whiskies. An armchair at the bar, facing owner Emmanuel Dron's sizable collection of pre-World War II bottles of Scotch, is the best seat in the house.

Chinese restaurants are a dime a dozen in Singapore, but none can match the finesse and grandeur of Peach Blossoms. The restaurant at the Parkroyal Collection Marina Bay hotel is a stage for chef Edward Chong to parlay his training in Cantonese cuisine to dizzying East-meets-West heights. Case in point are his cigar rolls — deep-fried spring rolls filled with a medley of ingredients including shrimp paste, foie gras, and truffle, served with crispy rice “ash.” Chong also excels in classics and his roasted char siu (Cantonese style barbecue pork) is not to be missed.

As soon as you secure your plane tickets, book seats for an audience at Odette, where chef and co-owner Julien Royer leads a stellar ode to his grandmother. Tasting menu dishes feature carefully acquired ingredients in intricately plated still lifes: Beetroots tumble onto the plate in sorbets, meringues, and crumbles; carved rectangles of Challans guinea fowl perch precariously on celeriac risotto next to a lobe of molten foie gras. The setting — formerly side chambers of the Old Supreme Court — is also elegant, with installation artwork by Dawn Ng fluttering like butterflies across the dining room.

If you have time for just one indulgence, make it contemporary Singaporean fine-dining at Labyrinth at the Esplanade. Fun, playful, and just plain delicious, the inspired menu showcases creative riffs on local dishes courtesy of chef-owner Han Li Guang. His reinvention of Singapore’s famed chile crab, rojak, char kway teow (stir-fried rice noodles), and ice kacang (shave ice) deserve a standing ovation.

Minimum-intervention wines are increasing popular in Singapore, and RVLT, which stands for Revolution, is where you want to indulge. The wine bar, staffed by grape-obsessed owners Al Gho and Ian Lim, pours a daily-rotating list of whites and reds by the glass, and 150 bottles of biodynamic and organic wines and Champagnes await those on the prowl for something unique.

It's hard to snag a seat at Asia's best bar, so go party (sensibly) elsewhere till midnight, then take the leap of faith and push open 28 Hong Kong Street's unmarked door for some late-night cocktails and supper. The drinks whipped up by the world-class bar team are bold and potent, and the burger, grilled cheese, and arancini all provide enough second wind for more partying in the intimate converted shop-house.

A tzechar (stir-fry) institution now operated by third-generation owners, Keng Eng Kee serves cooked-to-order wok-fried dishes like coffee pork ribs, moonlight hor fun (wok-fried flat noodles with a raw egg), and Singapore’s best claypot pork liver. The old but airy kopitiam on Bukit Merah Lane 1 is usually packed to the gills, so don’t attempt a visit without a reservation. Insider tip: The owners also maintain a cramped but air-conditioned dining room in the same area; if you plan your meals in advance, you may be able to secure a seat in this cool, coveted space.

When in Singapore, eat crab, especially if you can get the chile crabs, black pepper crabs, and intensely savory crab bee hoon at this plain-Jane tze char (meaning stir-fry in Hokkien) joint on Tiong Bahru Road. There’s a lot to enjoy here amongst the stir-fried pig’s fallopian tubes and blood cockles with chiles, but the piece de resistance is the gigantic mud crab served with a riot of rice vermicelli in a hearty broth brimming with umami. 

At this craft beer bar set inside a kopitiam, owners Daniel Goh and Kuok Meng Chao pour 10 taps of envelope-pushing IPAs, sour beers, and imperial stouts from the likes of Mikkeller (Denmark), Beavertown (U.K.), Omnipollo (Sweden), and Anderson Valley (U.S.). Guzzle down your choice while teetering on hard plastic tables and stools in the sweltering food court.

The sprawling second-floor hawker center has plenty of stalls serving dishes at dinner time, but Yang Ji 194 is the real deal, plating hulking Asian bighead carp heads under a mess of steamed garlic, red chiles, and coriander. The bones close to the fish’s face are usually big and easy to spot, so dig in without fear.

One of the city’s best small-plates restaurants resides in this shop-house space with communal and counter-style dining on Ann Siang Road. Now helmed by chef Johanne Siy, former sous chef of the now defunct Restaurant André, Lolla has earned reverence for its produce and list of acclaimed wines. While you can’t go wrong with an a la carte order of the ever-popular squid ink custard with sea urchin, Siy’s tasting menu should be considered mandatory.

Gordon Ramsay was roundly trumped by Tian Tian's chefs at a cook-off, but watch locals roll their eyes at the selfie-stick tourists queueing for a taste at the Bourdain-approved stall. Make a beeline instead for Ah Tai, just three stalls down. The eponymous owner, who defected from Tian Tian, serves tender chicken with a more fragrant chile sauce that's liberally lashed with lime juice. Plus, you'll get your food in a fraction of the time it takes to get a plate at Tian Tian.

Michelin-starred Restaurant André may have closed, but the restaurant’s former executive chef, Zor Tan, has opened Restaurant Born. Housed in what used to be the Jinrikisha Station, a one-time depot for rickshaws, Born is a showcase for Tan’s high-concept cuisine that distills the momentous experiences and relationships in the Malaysian Chinese chef’s life into a parade of courses executed with pitch-perfect French techniques. Brace yourself for the restaurant’s stunning high-ceilinged dining room overhung with a gigantic origami art installation.

Humpback is a breezy Pacific Northwest-style diner where the seafood is bright and zingy, with crisp oysters flown in directly from Washington's Hama Hama oyster farm. After your meal, head next door to Gibson, owned by the same group, a playground of experimental cocktails where bartenders whirl ingredients like earthy-sweet beetroot nectar into a smoky mixture of tequila and mezcal.

The contemporary tasting menu by chef-owner Sun Kim is a wondrous ensemble of Korean-inspired courses executed with French techniques, Korean flavors, and premium produce. Headliners are aplenty, from an opening snack of gyeran jjim (steamed egg custard) to the lobster haemultang (spicy seafood stew), all the way through Kim’s take on Korean barbecue, which includes A4 Kagoshima wagyu served with gobo (burdock) rice and white kimchi.

Indian grill Revolver is a tasting menu-only eatery that doles out charred flavors with bold accents. The menu is completely changed every two months, but there are fixtures; the ever-popular tandoor-baked Kulchette (a play on roti) appears with a different dip bimonthly, while the courgette flower makes regular appearances with various stuffings (like a recent iteration with delicious prawn balchao). There is no doubt that executive chef Saurabh Udinia, formerly of Mumbai’s Masala Library, is destined for Michelin stardom.