Singapore

Lunchtime in a Singapore hawker centre is a controlled riot: hundreds of stalls under one roof, a packet of tissues 'choping' your seat, and the smoke of satay drifting over queues that move with quiet purpose. This is a city where four food cultures — Chinese, Malay, Indian and the Peranakan fusion the first two invented between them — share a single food court, and where a stall can hold a Michelin star while the plate still costs a few dollars.

The unofficial national dish is Hainanese chicken rice, poached chicken laid over rice cooked in its own broth, deceptively plain and completely addictive. Then there's chilli crab eaten with your hands, its sweet-hot sauce mopped up with fried buns; laksa, rice noodles in a rich coconut-curry soup; and the deep, dark Peranakan stew ayam buah keluak. Breakfast is its own institution — kaya toast with coconut jam, soft-boiled eggs and a thick, sweet kopi. The whole point is the mixing: order fish head curry and it comes Indian-fiery or Chinese-mild, the very same dish told two ways.