A Peranakan Morning in Katong

Most of Singapore has been rebuilt at least once. Katong and Joo Chiat, out east of the centre, largely have not, and walking them is the closest the city comes to showing you its own past at street level rather than behind glass.

The shophouses are the reason to come. Two storeys, narrow fronts, a covered walkway along the ground floor, and above it a riot of colour in mint green, coral, powder blue and butter yellow, with glazed tiles set into the façade, carved timber shutters and plaster flourishes over the windows. The row on Koon Seng Road is the one everybody photographs, and it is worth remembering while you do that these are houses with people in them.

They belong to the Peranakans: Straits-born Chinese families who married into the Malay world and made something new out of both. Their food is the clearest surviving expression of it, in coconut, tamarind, candlenut, pandan and laksa leaf, and Katong is where you eat it.

Katong laksa is the dish. Thick rice noodles cut short so a spoon does all the work, coconut gravy loud with dried shrimp, cockles and a spoonful of sambal on the side. There are two or three shops within a few doors of each other that each claim the original recipe and each have their partisans, and the sensible response is to eat at whichever has the queue.

Afterwards, kueh. Small, dense, brightly coloured cakes of rice flour and coconut and pandan, steamed and layered, sold by the piece from a glass case. Buy a box, eat two on the walk and take the rest back to the hotel, where they will not last the afternoon.

Do this on a slow morning early in the stay. It is the quietest thing on a Singapore itinerary and it changes how the hawker tables taste for the rest of the week.

Good to know

• Early. The light is better for the shophouses and the heat has not arrived.
• These are private homes. Photograph the street, not through anyone’s front door.
• Small notes for the kueh shops and the older eating houses.
• Opening days vary and some places close mid-afternoon or on a fixed day. We check your dates.
• The house museums are private and visits are arranged rather than assumed. Ask us early if this matters.
• Flat, easy walking, and there is shade under the five-foot ways for most of it.