Newton Food Centre

Prawn mee at the Newton counter

From Jack Teo ’s station at Newton Food Centre in Singapore, the prawn mee leaves as a bowl built around pork rib and prawn. Teo is chef and owner at Adam Road Prawn Noodle (San Ge) inside Newton Food Centre, in Newton, Singapore, where his work sits within one of the city’s largest hawker rooms rather than behind a closed kitchen door. His public profile is tied to prawn mee, a line of cooking where stock, timing and the queue meet at the counter. At Adam Rd Noo Cheng Big Prawn Noodle, also in Singapore, night service gives the clearest frame for his discipline: service begins at 6.30pm, and customers continue lining up until 10pm. At Newton Food Centre, Teo runs the stall there, carrying that same focus into a hawker centre known for scale, movement and direct exchange between cook and customer.

The dish most closely attached to him is Prawn Noodle with Pork Rib & Prawn. It is not a plate built for ornament. The structure is in the pairing named on the bowl: pork rib for depth, prawn for sweetness, noodles to take the broth, and the counter rhythm to keep the work moving. Teo’s recognition, a Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2024, belongs to his prawn mee rather than to a tasting-menu language. The measure remains practical. People stand in line, order, collect, eat.

A hawker centre built for many hands

Newton Food Centre has operated since 1971, and its craft is plural by design. More than 80 stalls work under the same open-air roof, each with its own station, queue and regulars. Teo’s prawn mee sits among satay, fried oyster omelette, BBQ sambal stingray and chili crab, dishes that require different fires, different pans, different instincts at the pass. The centre’s culinary approach is traditional, but tradition here does not mean stillness. It means repetition in public, with no wall between the hands and the guest.

Self service shapes the pace. A cook works, a customer watches, a number is called, a tray moves through the room. At a hawker centre, the method has to survive interruption: another order, another request, another bowl sent out while the wok beside it flares for seafood. Teo’s station belongs to that system. Prawn mee gives him a narrow field to work deeply, while the surrounding stalls make the place wider, louder and more various than any single menu could be.

Light, smoke and the counter line

The room at Newton Food Centre is open-air and bright under hawker centre lighting, with the sound of orders, cutlery and fans folding into the cooking. The counter is not decorative. It is where the exchange happens, close enough for steam to reach the person waiting and near enough for the cook’s sequence to be legible. Bowls come forward, plates pass sideways, tables fill and clear.

Its fame outside Singapore grew through a screen appearance in Crazy Rich Asians, but the centre’s working life is older than that citation. Each night, a very large hawker room repeats, with more than 80 stalls keeping separate programs under one roof. For Teo, the concrete noun is still the bowl from there.