SINGAPORE - To mark Singapore's 50th birthday, City Hawker Food Hunt has introduced a new award category for "heritage" hawker stalls for this year's competition.
The award aims to recognise stalls that have been serving good hawker fare for more than 50 years as well as the pioneer generation hawkers who run them.
City Gas, which organises the annual event with Shin Min Daily News, will also collaborate with the National Heritage Board (NHB) to produce a special SG50 edition of the City Hawker Food Guide. The 200-page bilingual publication that will trace the evolution of Singapore's hawker heritage. It will also include a listing of Singapore's top 50 hawker dishes.
This year's competition was launched on Wednesday in an opening ceremony at Alexandra Village Food Centre, the organisers said a press release.
Other award categories include the coveted "Favourite Hawker Centre" and "Cleanest Hawker Centre".
Winners are decided based on public voting for a shortlist drawn up by the organisers. The public can visit www.cityhawkerfoodhunt.com to vote for their favourite hawkers from May 1 till Aug 31. An award ceremony for the winners will be held in November.
On Wednesday, 60 senior citizen residents from the Queenstown community attended the opening ceremony where they tasted dishes from the hawker categories selected for this year's hunt - popiah, lontong, curry fish head and tau suan.
Member of Parliament for Tanjong Pagar GRC Chia Shi-Lu also attended the lunch reception and distributed red packets to residents who were present.
A donation cheque of $2,000 was presented to Dr Chia and Mr Lim Eng Hock, the hawker representative of Alexandra Village Business Association, on behalf of Queenstown Citizens' Consultative Committee (CCC) Community Development and Welfare Fund.
City Hawker Food Hunt is supported by Health Promotion Board, National Environment Agency, National Heritage Board and Singapore Tourism Board.
