food courts from Foreginer's perspective - Chisako

Food court

First of all, I would like to talk about some differences between hawker center and food court. Compared to Hawker centers, most of food courts are located within shopping malls so that people can enjoy shop and have an easy access to their food. Since food courts are located in shopping malls, the price of food is more expensive than hawker centers. In addition, food courts are more hygienic than local hawker centers. We’ve been to Newton circus as a part of research, and I found it out that hawker center is more hygienic than local one, but still food courts are more hygienic. Also, people are different. You can find ‘real’ locals in local hawker centers, but you can see tourist, foreigners living in Singapore and Singaporean in food courts. I think this is because food courts have more varieties of food. For example, they have Singaporean cuisine, Western food, Vietnamese food, Japanese food, Chinese food, and so on. Also, people works there are different. Since food courts attract not only tourists but also local people, they understand English, however, people work in hawker center, there are less people use English when they work. I (Japanese, sometime look like Chinese??) usually talked in Chinese when I go to hawker centers to eat. From one of foreigners view, I think hawker center is more local. Furthermore, the quality food is different. The food in food court, anyone can make it same. However, hawker center, they have a kind of specialties. They’ve been researched their way to make dishes.

In this section, I would like to mention about some similarities between food courts and hawker centers. They are both nice place to eat, compared to restraunt. It is much cheaper to eat. Also, most Singaporeans are busy working, studying. They don’t have so much time to eat, but both food courts and hawker centers are for people who don’t have so much time. It doesn’t take to get the food, and finish the food. I think that both food courts and hawker centers are kind of iconic things to represent busy Singapore.

From my foreigner’s prospective view, hawker centers are more adventurous, and food courts are safe place to eat. When I didn’t get used to the taste of Singaporean food, hawker centers are more adventurous, because sometimes I got something I didn’t like. Once I got to used to, it is really good to eat hawker centers because it’s cheap, and taste local. You can find really nice food in hawker centers.
However food courts’ foods are kind safe to me, because they usually have some Japanese food, or Chinese food, which is more familiar to my tongue.