The MICHELIN Guide to Singapore: 288 Exceptional Places to Eat
(This article appeared first in Living in Singapore on pages 30-31 at https://issuu.com/singaporeame...
When I first ate noodles from a small hawker stall in Zion Road, it was early in the day, I picked them up quickly and I didn’t notice anything special about the stall. They were really good. The next time I went back, for a midday lunch, there was a 20-minute queue of people waiting for noodles. I had more time to look around and finally noticed a MICHELIN sign. It turns out that Kang’s Wanton Noodle had won a Bib Gourmand award from renowned food guide MICHELIN.
While MICHELIN is probably best known for its one-, two- and three-star restaurants, its Bib Gourmand category recognizes excellent restaurants that are more casual. My nearby hawker stall is one of them.
The Michelin Guide
That small shop is part of a long and storied history.
The MICHELIN Guide dates back to 1880, when the two brothers who founded the Michelin tire company produced a guide listing places to eat or stay for the night, in hopes that more people would buy cars and need their tires. They continued in a simple format until they launched a brand-new MICHELIN Guide in 1920 that included fancy restaurants in Paris in specific categories. Today, the MICHELIN Guide is recognized as a premier source of insights for foodies looking for the best meals in the world.
Michelin says full-time inspectors select the restaurants by traveling the world, going everywhere from big metropolises to rural outposts. Restaurants receive one to three MICHELIN Stars for their food based on the quality of ingredients, mastery of flavor and cooking techniques, the personality of the chef in the cuisine, harmony of flavors, and consistency.
After focusing on high-end restaurants for decades, MICHELIN created Bib Gourmand in 1997. Its Bibendum focuses on places that serve good cuisine at reasonable prices in simple spaces.
Only in 2016 did the Bib Gourmand expand to hawker stalls and street food, starting with Singapore, when Michelin released the 2016 MICHELIN Guide Singapore. Two hawker stalls, Hill Street Tai Hwa Pork Noodle and Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodle, made their debut with one-star ratings. 17 other hawkers received a Bib Gourmand listing. Since then, the Bibendum has expanded to other countries in Southeast Asia.
In its latest edition, in 2025, Michelin featured 288 establishments in Singapore, including 3 three MICHELIN Star, 7 two MICHELIN Star and 32 one MICHELIN Star restaurants, as well as 89 Bib Gourmand winners and 157 MICHELIN Selected Addresses, places that are recommended yet don’t reach the Bib standard. There are 151 hawker stalls on the list.
Awards Bring Recognition and Customers
For top restaurants, stars are a key part of the business and make the places more discoverable. “For many international guests,” chef Sebastien Lepinoy of Les Amis told CNA, “the three stars are what first brings them to Les Amis. As more than 40 per cent of our guests are tourists, we see the value of the Michelin stars as truly enormous.” An evening meal at Les Amis, Le Menu Degustation Printanier, costs S$550.
Hawkers benefit too. Chicken Rise proprietor Chan Hong Meng told Business Insider that being named on the Michelin Guide's "budget" list is good for his food's reputation. Even after dropping to Bib Gourmand in recent years, Chan said the recognition gives the same affirmation to his food as the star. Chan’s chicken rice costs less than S$5.
A Bib Gourmand or Selected Address award can indeed make a difference. Sumadi Datang, the owner of Saprari Selamat at Adam Road Hawker Center told CNA he estimates the increase in customers to be at least 30 percent.
Alternatives Exist
MICHELIN isn’t the only player in the rating category, of course. Another well-known one is The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, along with Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, with restaurants selected based on votes by chefs, restaurateurs, critics and “well-travelled gourmets”. A newer player is The Black Pearl Restaurant Guide, founded by Chinese retail giant Meituan in 2018. It focuses on fine dining in Asia through what it calls the perspective of Chinese consumers.
How to the MICHELIN Guide
The next question, of course, is how to find the establishments that MICHELIN rates. Fortunately, it’s easy. Go online, head to https://guide.michelin.com/sg/en, type in Singapore and you’ll find all the awardees on the island. You can type in “3 Star”, “Singapore Bib Gourmand”, “Singapore Street Food” or another type to get a list of the awardees in a particular category.
Local media also covers new places when the awards are announced. CNA offered details of the new Bib Gourmand places last year, for example, and the Straits Times covered those awarded stars. MICHELIN itself and social media also provide details of the awards.
The challenge then is narrowing down the dozens of selections to the ones that you’ll actually try. You could try a new place every weekday of the year and still not get to them all.
For me, I learned that a Sri Lankan restaurant near where I live is one of the recent awardees, so I’ll be going there to check it out. And I’ll continue to be a regular at Kang’s Wanton Noodle, enjoying MICHELIN quality noodles for less than $5.
