Lau Pa Sat

Lau Pa Sat is a hawker centre at 18 Raffles Quay in the Downtown Core, housed in the former Telok Ayer Market, a cast-iron market hall completed in 1894 and gazetted as a national monument in 1973. Municipal Engineer James MacRitchie designed the building, which echoes the octagonal plan of the earlier market on the site, and its Victorian cast-iron elements were prefabricated by Walter MacFarlane & Company, an iron foundry in Glasgow. The structure was taken apart when the MRT system was built in the mid-1980s and put back together a few years later, and it reopened in 2014 after its last major refurbishment.

The building is open 24 hours and fills up at lunchtime with office workers from the Central Business District. In the evening the grills move onto Boon Tat Street beside the market, where Satay Street runs from 7pm to 3am on weekdays and from 3pm to 3am at weekends. Look up as you eat to see the clock tower and the cast iron shipped out from Glasgow. The market is managed by FairPrice Group's Kopitiam, and Downtown, Telok Ayer, Raffles Place and Shenton Way MRT stations are all within walking distance.