Restaurant in Singapore, Singapore
Real Singapore hawker cooking, far from tourist traps.
Hai Nan Zai is a hawker stall in Yishun's Soon Hong Eating House cooking Singaporean classics — oyster omelette, fried prawn mee, carrot cake, and fried kway teow with cockles and Chinese sausage — all to order. At $ pricing with no booking required, it is worth the trip north if you want to eat the way Singapore's neighbourhoods actually eat.
Hai Nan Zai is the right call for anyone who wants to eat the way Singapore actually eats: at a kopitiam table, ordering dishes cooked to order by a single stall, paying almost nothing. It is a particularly good fit for a weekday lunch or casual dinner where the goal is honest, well-executed hawker food rather than a restaurant occasion. This is not a special-occasion venue in the conventional sense, but for visitors or locals who treat great hawker food as its own kind of celebration, it earns that framing easily.
Hai Nan Zai operates out of Soon Hong Eating House in Yishun, the kind of industrial-estate coffee shop that exists well outside Singapore's tourist corridor. The address — 1 Yishun Industrial Street 1 , tells you something useful before you arrive: this is a working neighbourhood stall, not a heritage-district institution dressed for visitors. Getting here takes intention. That is not a warning so much as a filter: the people who make the trip tend to know exactly what they are coming for.
The cooking sits squarely in the Singaporean hawker canon. Oyster omelettes, fried prawn mee, and carrot cake form the backbone of the menu. The stall's fried kway teow with cockles and Chinese sausage is cooked to order, which matters: kway teow is a dish that degrades quickly once it leaves the wok, and the cooked-to-order approach keeps the texture and wok hei intact in a way that batch cooking cannot replicate. For the fried prawn mee, the comparison benchmark in Singapore is strong , 545 Whampoa Prawn Noodles and Adam Rd Noo Cheng Big Prawn Noodle both carry serious reputations , so the category is competitive. Hai Nan Zai holds its ground on the strength of consistent execution across multiple dishes rather than a single breakthrough item.
The carrot cake and oyster omelette round out a stall that covers more ground than most single-operator hawker stations. Each of those dishes demands different technique: the oyster omelette requires timing and a properly seasoned pan; the carrot cake needs patient frying to develop the right crust. Chef Jeong-in Hwang runs all of this from a single stall, which is worth noting not as biography but as context for what you are ordering , this is a focused, technically demanding operation working at hawker scale and hawker prices.
Google rating sits at 3.7 from 13 reviews, which is a thin sample and should not be read as a reliable quality signal in either direction. Hawker stalls in Singapore are frequently under-reviewed relative to restaurants, and many of the strongest stalls in the city carry modest aggregate scores simply because their regulars do not leave digital reviews. The more meaningful signal here is the cooked-to-order model, which indicates a stall with enough volume and confidence to hold that standard rather than pre-cooking and holding.
For context on where Hai Nan Zai sits in the broader Singapore street food picture: the fried kway teow format has strong competition across the island. 91 Fried Kway Teow Mee is one of the more discussed addresses in that specific category. The difference at Hai Nan Zai is the range , you can build a full meal across multiple dish types rather than committing to a single speciality stall. That makes it more practical for a table of two or three with different appetites, or for someone who wants to eat across the hawker repertoire in a single sitting.
Compared to Singapore's other hawker reference points , Hill Street Tai Hwa Pork Noodle carries a Michelin star and the queues to match; A Noodle Story has crossover appeal for visitors , Hai Nan Zai is operating at a lower profile and a lower price point in a less central location. Whether that is a drawback depends entirely on what you are optimising for. If you want to eat well at hawker prices without queuing alongside tour groups, the Yishun location is a feature, not a flaw.
The price tier is the lowest available, which means a full meal here costs a fraction of what you would spend at any sit-down restaurant in Singapore, let alone the fine-dining tier. For a visitor trying to understand what Singapore food actually tastes like at the neighbourhood level, this is a more instructive meal than many higher-profile options. For a local who lives or works near Yishun, this is a stall worth knowing for regular use.
Regional comparisons for street food context: the hawker format has close cousins across Southeast Asia. 888 Hokkien Mee in George Town and Ah Boy Koay Teow Th'ng in Penang operate in the same tradition of single-operator wok cooking with long institutional histories. A Pong Mae Sunee in Phuket and Anuwat in Phang Nga represent the Thai side of the same regional street food culture. Hai Nan Zai belongs to this broader category of serious single-operator hawker cooking that rewards the traveller willing to leave the city centre. See also: Air Itam Duck Rice, Air Itam Sister Curry Mee, Ali Nasi Lemak Daun Pisang, and Banana Boy in Hong Kong for comparable operators in other cities.
For more Singapore eating and drinking options: our full Singapore restaurants guide, Singapore hotels, Singapore bars, Singapore wineries, and Singapore experiences.
Go knowing it is a hawker stall inside a kopitiam, not a restaurant. You order at the counter, find a table yourself, and pay hawker prices. The stall is in Yishun's industrial area, so it takes a deliberate trip from the city centre , plan around it rather than treating it as a convenient stop. The range of dishes (oyster omelette, carrot cake, fried prawn mee, kway teow) means you can order across several plates and eat broadly through the Singaporean hawker repertoire in one sitting.
Yes, in the way that all kopitiam stalls accommodate groups: the eating house has shared tables and there is no formal booking process. Groups of four to six can eat well here by ordering multiple dishes between them. The cooked-to-order format means timing can stagger slightly for large tables, so order in rounds. There is no private dining and no advance reservation system.
The fried kway teow with cockles and Chinese sausage is the dish to start with , it is cooked to order, which is the right way to eat kway teow. The oyster omelette and carrot cake are both on the menu and worth ordering if you are eating as a pair or group. For fried prawn mee, Hai Nan Zai is in competitive company across Singapore, but it is a reasonable choice here if you want to combine it with the other dishes rather than making a dedicated trip for prawn noodles alone.
The core menu includes shellfish (oysters, cockles), pork (Chinese sausage, lard is standard in hawker kway teow), and egg (oyster omelette). This is not a stall that adapts easily to significant dietary restrictions , the dishes are defined by their traditional ingredients. No website or phone number is publicly listed, so it is not possible to confirm substitutions in advance. If shellfish or pork are issues, most of the signature dishes here will not work for you.
No booking is needed or possible. This is a walk-in hawker stall. Arrive, order at the counter, and find a seat in the eating house. The only practical timing consideration is avoiding peak meal hours if you want minimal wait , Singapore hawker stalls tend to be busiest at 12–1 PM for lunch and 6–7 PM for dinner. Coming slightly before or after those windows typically means faster service.
There is no dress code. This is a kopitiam stall in an industrial-area eating house. Casual clothing is standard and expected. Singapore's heat and humidity make lightweight, comfortable clothes the sensible choice regardless of venue.
| Venue | Cuisine | Awards | Booking Difficulty | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hai Nan Zai | Street Food | Singaporean food such as oyster omelettes, fried prawn mee and carrot cakes. Fried kway teow with cockles and Chinese sausage are cooked-to-order.; Singaporean food such as oyster omelettes, fried prawn mee and carrot cakes. Fried kway teow with cockles and Chinese sausage are cooked-to-order. | Easy | — |
| Zén | European Contemporary | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | Unknown | — |
| Jaan by Kirk Westaway | British Contemporary | Michelin 2 Star, World's 50 Best | Unknown | — |
| Iggy's | Modern European, European Contemporary | Michelin 1 Star, World's 50 Best | Unknown | — |
| Summer Pavilion | Cantonese | Michelin 1 Star, World's 50 Best | Unknown | — |
| Waku Ghin | Creative Japanese, Japanese Contemporary | Michelin 1 Star, World's 50 Best | Unknown | — |
A quick look at how Hai Nan Zai measures up.
Hai Nan Zai sits inside Soon Hong Eating House at 1 Yishun Industrial Street 1, deep in an industrial estate well outside the city centre. Getting there requires intent, but that's the point: this is a working kopitiam serving fried kway teow with cockles and Chinese sausage, oyster omelettes, and prawn mee to a local crowd, not a tourist-facing hawker hall. Budget $-range pricing means you can eat well for very little, but go knowing the location is inconvenient unless you're already in the north.
A kopitiam setting like Soon Hong Eating House generally has shared tables, so larger groups can pull chairs together without a reservation system. That said, a hawker stall operating at this price point and format isn't designed for structured group bookings. For parties of 6 or more, arrive early and expect to manage seating yourselves.
The fried kway teow with cockles and Chinese sausage is the core order here: it's cooked to order, which matters in a format where many stalls batch-cook. Oyster omelette, fried prawn mee, and carrot cake round out the menu. If you're choosing one dish, the kway teow is the reason most people make the trip to Yishun.
The menu is built around shellfish (cockles, oysters, prawns) and pork (Chinese sausage), so options for those avoiding either are limited. Dietary restriction handling is not documented in the available venue data, and a hawker stall of this format rarely offers formal substitutions. Guests with shellfish or pork restrictions should review the menu carefully before the trip.
Hai Nan Zai doesn't operate a reservation system — this is a hawker stall in a kopitiam, so it's walk-in only. The trade-off for no booking friction is unpredictable wait times during peak meal hours. Arriving at off-peak times (mid-morning or mid-afternoon if hours permit) is the practical way to avoid a queue.
Dress for a casual industrial-estate coffee shop in Singapore's humidity: whatever you'd wear running errands. There is no dress code at a kopitiam of this type. Comfortable, lightweight clothing is the only sensible call.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
