Online food fight ensues over article about Singapore having the best street food in the world

Singapore is definitely a lot of things — economic powerhouse, expensive to live in, millennial-friendly (whatever that means). But one thing’s for sure; the Little Red Dot technically does not host the world’s best street food. 

It’s something that Tripzilla recently reported about, basing their piece on the results of a survey carried out by CEOWorld magazine. Said study took 50 cities from around the world and ranked them according to the best places for travellers looking for street food. 

You can already see how the results could be a wee bit askew — after all, the respondents consisted of business travellers and corporate travel agents, aka a crowd not really known for sitting by sweltering roadsides to get some proper street grub.  

Despite technically not having any street-side stalls selling food and beverages, Singapore managed to edge out cities such as Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Mexico, Seoul and more to score the title of best city in the world for street food. 

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You can already envision the uproar and outrage over the finding, including vehement disagreements from Singaporeans themselves. In fact, a food war of sorts is currently raging on social media, filled with comments by many Asian netizens questioning how the likes of Malaysian cities aren’t even included in the list. 

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To be fair, Tripzilla did acknowledge that Singapore's "street food" is basically defined as fare sold in hawker centres and coffee shops. Considering that the offerings at Maxwell Food Centre and Lau Pa Sat are the closest thing to street food for atas CEOs (plus hygiene being a factor in the index), it’s probably a fair-ish evaluation. Those business-class travellers are probably missing out on the real street food, anyway. 

ilyas@asiaone.com