Jalan Besar: Hardware and Late Dim Sum

Start your morning in Jalan Besar on Petain Road, and get there before 11am, while nobody's standing in front of the tiled shophouses, the narrow terraced buildings with a shop below and a home above. Bendemeer MRT is the closer station: take Exit A and you'll be there in five to eight minutes. After that, you can eat oyster cake and drink coffee in an old hardware store before lunch, or come back after 10pm for dim sum at Swee Choon. With one visit, we'd take the morning and save the dim sum for a night you're out late anyway.

Time Out named Jalan Besar Singapore's coolest neighbourhood for 2026, but the street has kept its trades. It's a one-way road of hardware suppliers, auto workshops, canvas shops and lighting wholesalers, trades that moved in when this was swampy ground between Rochor and Kallang. The cafes arrived later and settled in among them. It's still a working district that simply learned to make good espresso along the way. Tekka Centre is a station to the west and Sultan Mosque a station to the south, but this walk stays with the hardware and the late dim sum.

Bendemeer Exit A is also the nearer exit for Chye Seng Huat and the stadium on Tyrwhitt Road. Jalan Besar MRT suits the other end of the street. Its Exit B comes out toward Veerasamy Road and Dunlop Street, about five minutes from Berseh Food Centre. Exit A comes up at Sim Lim Square and Weld Road, which is handy for the computer mall and a detour for the shophouses, so if you surface among phone cases, head back in. Farrer Park and Lavender MRT work too, and Lavender is the easy one from the East-West Line. Skip Little India MRT for this walk, since it puts you a neighbourhood away.

Petain Road's tiles

Petain Road has 18 Chinese Baroque shophouses from the early 1930s, conserved in 1991 as part of the Jalan Besar Conservation Area, and their tiled fronts are the photograph everyone comes for. They're private homes, so take your pictures from the street and keep the five-foot way, the covered walkway along the shophouse fronts, clear for residents heading out to work. Ten minutes is plenty. Come first thing and treat breakfast as the reward. Chye Seng Huat is only three to five minutes away on Tyrwhitt Road, but we'd eat first.

Oyster cake at Berseh

Berseh Food Centre at 166 Jalan Besar is a two-storey, government-run hawker centre, where rows of small cooking stalls share the tables. It's been here since the 1970s and reopened after repairs. Stalls keep their own hours, so plan around one of them: Fu Zhou Poh Hwa, upstairs at #02-34.

Their oyster cake is a Fuzhou snack shaped like a flying saucer, with oysters and minced pork in a crisp batter. It's fried to order, so call ahead if you'd rather not wait, and aim to arrive before the lunch crowd. The stall is typically open from 10.30am to 6pm and closed on Tuesdays. It's the best reason to be on this road before noon. When you've finished, return your tray to the rack like everyone else.

Coffee on Tyrwhitt Road

Then walk over to Chye Seng Huat Hardware at 150 Tyrwhitt Road. PPP Coffee turned this 1950s hardware store into a cafe in 2012, with a 360-degree bar in the middle and a roastery on site, plus retail in the Annex. The coffee bar opens from 9am to 7pm Tuesday to Friday and 9am to 10pm on weekends, and it's closed on Mondays. The Annex opens 9am to 9pm daily, except the first Monday of the month. If you'd like the story with your cup, roastery tours run from 2pm to 3pm on alternate Fridays and Saturdays.

Jalan Besar Stadium is also on Tyrwhitt Road, at number 100. It opened on Boxing Day 1929, is officially Jalan Besar ActiveSG Stadium, and is still the 6,000-seat home of Singapore football. Go on a match day, and check the fixtures on ActiveSG. The bigger stage is the Sports Hub at Kallang, about 10 minutes away by taxi, or take the train to Stadium MRT. From the Hub, you can walk along the river through Kallang Riverside Park.

Supper at Swee Choon

Swee Choon Tim Sum at 183–193 Jalan Besar has been serving dim sum since 1962, and it's built for supper, the late meal Singapore eats after a night out or a long shift. The flagship now opens every day, so ignore older posts that say it closes on Tuesdays. From Sunday to Thursday it runs 7am to 2am, with last orders at 1.30am. On Fridays, Saturdays and the eves of public holidays it runs 7am to 4am, with last orders at 3.30am. For dim sum at any hour, the 24-hour branch is at Changi Airport Terminal 2.

We'd come after 10pm, when a round table and a stack of steamer baskets can be the whole evening. It's an eight- to 10-minute walk along Jalan Besar from Chye Seng Huat. Or come at 7am for siew mai, the open-topped pork dumplings, alongside the breakfast regulars. Around 1pm on a Saturday the queue gets long, so on Saturdays come early or late. If you'd like live music before supper, Blu Jaz near Bali Lane in Kampong Gelam (Kampong Glam) is the room for it, and a good fallback when Haji Lane has turned into one long queue.

South to Kampong Gelam

Kampong Gelam is a 12- to 15-minute walk south from Jalan Besar to Bussorah Street and Gate 5 of Sultan Mosque, or eight to 10 minutes from Bugis MRT Exit B. Visitors can walk in through Gate 5 from Saturday to Thursday, 10am to noon and 2pm to 4pm. On Fridays it's closed to sightseers. Robes are lent free at the counter, and shoes come off inside. That makes the 2pm slot an easy follow-on to a morning here, with lunch in between.

Close by on North Bridge Road, Heap Seng Leong is one of the last old-school kopitiams, or traditional coffee shops, in the centre, and breakfast there is kopi, the local coffee, with a raw egg. We'd go if Swee Choon at 7am feels like a commitment, or if it's Monday and Chye Seng Huat is shut. Sit down, take your time and leave the uncle out of your videos. Aliwal Arts Centre, a short walk from Haji Lane, has studios and the odd gig or market, so check what's on before you go.

Bugis Street is next door, a loud run of covered lanes selling cheap tees and sugar-cane juice. With children along, MINT Museum of Toys fills five floors with vintage toys, tin robots included, for when the hardware has worn thin.

Little India lies the other way. Tekka is 10 to 15 minutes' walk west, and Mustafa Centre at 145 Syed Alwi Road is a 24-hour department store you can lose an hour in, with Farrer Park MRT closer than Little India MRT. We'd give them a morning of their own, since a banana-leaf lunch on top of this walk makes for a long, hot day.

Mondays and Geylang Bahru

Monday changes the plan more than any other day. Chye Seng Huat's coffee bar is closed, and on the first Monday of the month the Annex is too. Swee Choon opens every day and Petain Road is there to walk whenever you like. The oyster cake at Berseh takes Tuesdays off rather than Mondays, so make Monday a hawker day, with kopi at Heap Seng Leong in place of a flat white. On Tuesday it flips round, with good coffee and no oyster cake.

If Berseh was only a snack, ride two stops up the Downtown Line to Geylang Bahru MRT. Geylang Bahru Market at 69 Geylang Bahru is across the road, typically open from 6am to 11.45pm Monday to Saturday and from 7am on Sundays, and most of its tables are filled by people who live nearby. Hui Wei Chilli Ban Mian at #01-58 holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and typically cooks from 11.30am to 9.30pm, Saturday to Thursday, closing on Fridays. The ice rink and the river basin in Kallang fill a morning of their own. Back on Jalan Besar, end the way the street does best: at a round table at Swee Choon, with one more basket than you meant to order.