Betting on elevated local food

Dinner at Labyrinth starts, as it might on any casual night out, with a bowl of bak kut teh broth.

- Cherie Lok

What follows is a highlight reel of the island's hawker delights: oyster bao, satay, char kway teow and chicken rice, just to name a few. At some point, a small round "hawker tabletop" in that unmistakable shade of lemon yellow is trotted out, complete with a tray return sticker and a tissue packet to "chope" your spot.

In some ways, it is a quintessentially Singaporean dining experience. There is just one catch - this spread of local food will set you back over $298 a person.

Of course, this is not your average hawker meal. It is a 13-course extravaganza served not in an open-air foodcourt, but a one-Michelin-starred restaurant in the Esplanade, where beneath the yellow tabletops lie spotless wooden tables, and where your tissue packet will not help with securing a seat, which has to be reserved weeks in advance.

"Diners are becoming more accustomed to Singaporean cuisine beyond the hawker centre. There's a demand for good food and good service," says Labyrinth chef-owner Han Liguang, 39, whose 11-year-old restaurant is still going strong.

For its new menu, he wanted to dig even deeper into Singapore's culinary heritage, reviving forgotten dishes like wartime rojak and Siglap laksa, which have fallen out of vogue due to rising costs or manpower limitations. "It's about preserving their knowledge and recipes."

Preservation has, in recent years, become the inevitable buzzword looming over any discussion of hawker culture. The practice itself seems to be under constant stress: Veterans retiring with no successors in sight. Costs increasing. Prices rising. Customers complaining. Customers complaining about other customers complaining. Lately, even Parliament has started to weigh in.