Arab Street Food Guide: What to Eat Shop by Shop

Quick Answer

This Arab Street food guide walks the street in order rather than ranking it. Arab Street itself is mostly textiles, rugs and perfume, with the food clustered on the cross streets, above all Bussorah Street. Expect Turkish and Lebanese grills around S$25 to S$50 a head, nasi padang and Malay plates under S$10, and coffee in between. Most kitchens run to 10pm or 11pm, and one spot serves until 2am.

Here is the thing nobody tells you

You get off at Bugis, walk seven minutes from Exit B, turn onto Arab Street expecting the smell of charcoal, and instead you get bolts of fabric. Rolls of it. Rattan baskets. A perfumery that has been blending oils for decades.

The food is real, and there is a lot of it. It is just not mostly on Arab Street.

Most guides to this area quietly solve that problem by putting Haji Lane restaurants under an Arab Street headline, or by listing places on Beach Road and North Bridge Road and calling it close enough. One widely read list has thirteen venues and not one of them has an Arab Street address.

So here is the walk, street by street, with what each stretch is actually for. Read it before you go and you will stop circling the same block.

What Arab Street Is Actually Famous For

Arab Street runs between Beach Road and North Bridge Road, at the heart of Kampong Glam. It was named after Syed Ali bin Mohamed Al Junied, an Arab merchant who owned land here, and it sat inside the Muslim quarter mapped out in the 1822 town plan.

That history still shows in what the shophouses sell. Textiles, carpets, rattan, prayer mats, oud and attar perfume. If you are shopping for fabric by the metre, this is the best street in the country for it.

The eating happens in three places: a handful of spots on Arab Street itself, the pedestrian run of Bussorah Street that points straight at Sultan Mosque, and the lanes behind.

Arab Street vs Haji Lane: Not the Same Street

They are two minutes apart and they are not interchangeable.

Arab Street is wide, has traffic, and sells things. Haji Lane is narrow, pedestrian, covered in murals, and sells drinks and small plates to people taking photographs of the murals. Bali Lane sits beside it and does the same thing with a slightly older crowd.

If someone tells you to go to Arab Street for cocktails, they mean Haji Lane. If someone tells you to go to Haji Lane for a sit-down Turkish dinner, they have not been.

We wrote this out properly in Haji Lane vs Arab Street if you want the longer version.

The Walk, Street by Street

Arab Street itself

Start at the Beach Road end and work up. This stretch is shops first, food second, and the food that is here skews toward daytime.

Anatolia, 58 Arab Street. Ours, so take the recommendation with that in mind. Turkish and Lebanese, charcoal grill, 100% halal ingredients, open 10am to midnight every day. Mandi from S$34.90, Ali Nazik at S$34.90, falafel wrap at S$19.90, kunafa at S$19.90. The full menu is here.

House of Kebab, 21 Arab Street. Turkish and Lebanese, open 11am to 10pm. Sits in the higher band, roughly S$50 a head, with a family platter built for a group.

All Things Delicious, 34 Arab Street. Bakery cafe, 8am to 7pm. Shakshuka, pastries, good coffee. The right answer if you arrive before the grills open.

% Arabica, 56 Arab Street. The Kyoto coffee chain. Around S$10. Minimalist, usually a queue, exactly what you expect.

Machi Machi, 25 Arab Street. Bubble tea, 11am to 7.30pm.

Cantina, 148 Arab Street. Asian and Middle Eastern crossover, 9am to 6pm most days, later on Friday. Mains around the mid-S$20s.

Bussorah Street

This is where the dinner actually is. Bussorah is pedestrianised, lined with outdoor tables, and runs straight at the gold dome of Sultan Mosque. It is the best-looking place to eat in the area and it knows it.

Zuzu, 45 Bussorah Street. Turkish, Lebanese, Arabic and Mediterranean, directly beside Sultan Mosque and a short walk from Haji Lane.

Tabbouleh, 54 Bussorah Street. Lebanese, 11am to 11pm, around S$25 a head. Mezze platters, kofta, shish tawouk.

Cappadocia, 69 Bussorah Street. Turkish, open late at 11.30pm, around S$30. Alfresco terrace with the mosque view.

Beirut Grill, 72 Bussorah Street. Lebanese, around S$30, and the only one here that splits its service with an afternoon break. Lunch runs 11.30am to 3.30pm, dinner 5.30pm to 11pm. Worth knowing before you turn up at 4pm hungry.

The Malayan Council, 71 Bussorah Street. Malay with Western crossover, 11am to 11pm, around S$35.

Kampong Glam Café, 17 Bussorah Street. The late one. Open until 2am, closed Mondays, plates in the S$5 to S$7 range. This is where you end up at midnight, and it is genuinely good rather than just open.

The quieter cross streets

Rumah Makan Minang, 18 and 18A Kandahar Street. Nasi padang, 9am to 7pm, around S$10. More than twenty varieties on the counter.

Hjh Maimunah, 11 Jalan Pisang. Michelin Bib Gourmand nasi padang, 7.30am to 6.30pm, closed Sunday, about S$10. Go early. The queue is not a myth.

Warong Nasi Pariaman, 738 North Bridge Road. One of the oldest nasi padang kitchens in the country. 7.30am to 3pm, closed Monday.

Zam Zam, 697 to 699 North Bridge Road. Established 1908. Murtabak and biryani, and the murtabak is the reason to go.

Haji Lane and Bali Lane

Drinks, small plates, and a wall worth photographing. Pita Bakery at 29 Bali Lane does pita, hummus and falafel out of a hole in the wall and sells out early. Nirvana Dessert Cafe at 37 Haji Lane handles the sugar at the end of the night.

At a Glance

$ under S$15 a head, $$ S$15 to S$35, $$$ above S$35. Bands, not quotes. Menus move.

What to Order If You Have Never Eaten Turkish or Lebanese Food

The menus around here share a vocabulary, and nobody explains it. Let's break it down.

The flatbread family

Four things look similar and are not.

• Pide is boat-shaped, Turkish, baked with cheese, minced meat or egg inside the hull. Our full explainer is at What Is Pide.
• Lahmacun is thin and flat, spread with spiced minced meat, rolled up with lemon and parsley. It is not pizza, whatever the menu says.
• Manakish is Levantine, topped with za'atar and olive oil, eaten at breakfast.
• Murtabak is the Indian-Muslim one, stuffed and folded and griddled, and Zam Zam is where you have it.

The grill

• Shish is cubed meat on a skewer.
• Adana is minced, spiced, pressed onto a flat skewer.
• Doner is the vertical rotisserie, carved off in slices.
• İskender is doner laid over bread with tomato sauce and yoghurt, and it is the one people order by accident and then order again on purpose.

If you want the longer version, we covered it in where to find the best kebab.

Mezze, and how to order for a table

Mezze is not a starter. It is the first half of the meal. Order three to five cold ones to share, hummus and baba ghanoush and a salad among them, then one or two hot ones, then a single large grill for the middle of the table. Bread keeps coming.

Four people need about four mezze and one mixed grill. Most tables over-order on the grill and under-order on the mezze, then leave half the meat.

Dessert

Baklava is layered pastry, nuts and syrup, eaten cold or room temperature. Kunafa is cheese under shredded pastry, and it has to arrive hot, with the syrup poured at the counter. If it comes out lukewarm, the cheese has set and you have missed it.

Related reading: What Is Baklava, Best Kunafa, Lebanese Food in Singapore.

Eating Here Late

Most kitchens stop between 10pm and 11.30pm. Three things to know.

Beirut Grill shuts between 3.30pm and 5.30pm, so the mid-afternoon gap is real. Kampong Glam Café runs to 2am and is closed Mondays. Anatolia serves to midnight, seven days.

After midnight on a weeknight, your options thin out fast. Plan the late meal rather than wandering into one. If you are out after a late event, we went into this properly in late night halal food near the circuit.

How to Check Halal Before You Order

This is the Muslim quarter, and a lot of guides treat halal as a label to drop rather than something to verify. Two different things get described with the same word.

Halal certified means the establishment holds certification from Muis, the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore. Singapore has been moving certificates to a digital format with a QR code, so the certificate on the wall should be scannable and should resolve to a live record.

Halal ingredients means the kitchen sources permitted ingredients but has not sought or does not hold certification. Anatolia uses 100% halal ingredients. Plenty of good kitchens around here sit in one camp or the other, and the distinction is worth knowing before you order rather than after.

What to check at the counter: whether a certificate is displayed and current, whether alcohol is served on the premises, and whether fryers and grills are shared. Vegetarian does not mean halal either, which we covered in Is Vegetarian Food Halal.

Ask. Nobody here minds being asked.

When to Go, and When Not To

Best: late afternoon into evening, roughly 5pm onward. The light on Bussorah Street is worth the walk on its own, the heat has broken, and the grills are properly going.

Avoid: midday, especially midweek. Full sun, no shade on Arab Street, and half the dinner places have not opened.

Weekends after 7pm are busy to the point of unpleasant on Haji Lane. Bussorah holds up better because it is wider.

One honest note. A queue outside a cafe on Haji Lane is usually evidence of a good photograph, not a good meal. The queue outside Hjh Maimunah at 11am is a different kind of queue. Learn to tell them apart and you will eat much better here.

For how the whole quarter came to be the way it is, see Kampong Glam history.

Author Bio

Anatolia Team

Written by the team at Anatolia, a Turkish and Lebanese kitchen at 58 Arab Street in Kampong Glam. We have cooked on this street long enough to know which neighbours are worth sending people to, and the recommendations here are the ones we give guests who ask what else to eat nearby.

Connect: anatoliarestaurantsg.com | +65 8227 7270

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Arab Street famous for?

Textiles, carpets, rattan and traditional perfumery, plus its position at the centre of Kampong Glam beside Sultan Mosque. The food is a strong second, concentrated on the cross streets rather than Arab Street itself.

What are the best restaurants on Arab Street in Singapore?

For Turkish and Lebanese, Anatolia at 58 Arab Street and House of Kebab at 21 Arab Street, with Tabbouleh, Cappadocia and Beirut Grill a minute away on Bussorah Street. For Malay and Indonesian, Hjh Maimunah and Rumah Makan Minang. For late night, Kampong Glam Café until 2am.

Is Arab Street in Singapore worth visiting?

Yes, if you go for the right reasons. It is the best place in the country to buy fabric, it has the densest cluster of Turkish, Lebanese and Malay food in the city, and Sultan Mosque is two minutes from most tables. Go in the late afternoon rather than at noon.

Are Haji Lane and Arab Street the same?

No. They are parallel and about two minutes apart. Arab Street is wider, has traffic and is retail-led. Haji Lane is a narrow pedestrian lane known for murals, bars and small plates.

Where should I eat around Arab Street?

Bussorah Street for sit-down dinner, Arab Street itself for daytime and coffee, North Bridge Road for murtabak and nasi padang, and Haji Lane or Bali Lane for drinks and dessert.

What is the most common food eaten in Singapore?

Rice and noodle dishes dominate nationally. In this neighbourhood specifically you are looking at nasi padang, murtabak and biryani alongside Turkish and Lebanese grills.

Is the food on Arab Street halal?

Much of it is, which is unsurprising given the location, but status varies between certified and ingredient-level. Check the certificate at the counter rather than assuming from the cuisine.

The Arab Street Food Guide, Short Version

The short version of this Arab Street food guide: shop on Arab Street, eat on Bussorah Street, drink on Haji Lane, and get your murtabak on North Bridge Road. Go after 5pm. Order more mezze than you think you need.

If you want the Turkish and Lebanese end of it, we are at 58 Arab Street, Singapore 199755, open 10am to midnight daily, seven minutes from Bugis MRT Exit B. Call or WhatsApp +65 8227 7270, book a table, or find us on Google Maps.