Tiong Bahru Market was the town hall before it was lunch

Tiong Bahru was public housing before it was a café district, and the market was its town hall.

Do Tiong Bahru slowly: lunch at the market, a sit on the roof garden, one coffee and a short loop of the 1930s blocks, with no attempt to tick off every café. It suits a Saturday with some history in it, and it suits a grandparent or a pram, because the market is wheelchair accessible on every floor. The compromise is that the market made its name on breakfast, so aim for late morning rather than mid-afternoon. One rule for the walk: people live here.

In the 1930s the Singapore Improvement Trust, the colonial forerunner of the HDB, built around 50 blocks of low-rise flats and shophouses here to rehouse families from overcrowded Chinatown, on land that Roots notes was once dotted with graves. The Art Deco curves in all those photo shoots were built as homes first, and they still are.

Tiong Bahru Market: the town hall that became lunch

The market is the starting point of the official heritage trail, and it earns the spot. It opened in 1950 as Seng Poh Road Market, named after Tan Seng Poh, Singapore’s first Chinese Municipal Commissioner, and was built to move street hawkers off the pavements of the growing estate; Roots describes the original as a simple wooden structure with a zinc roof.

It soon became more than a place to buy food. A 1951 meeting held there led to a community centre for the estate, it served as a polling centre in the 1951 and 1953 elections, and it hosted political rallies in the 1960s. For years it was, in effect, Tiong Bahru’s town hall.

The current building comes from a 2004 to 2006 rebuild that added Art Deco touches to match the estate: two storeys around a garden courtyard on a triangular site, about 255 wet-market and provision stalls downstairs and an 85-stall food centre upstairs seating roughly 1,050. Since the 1970s it has been known for traditional Chinese breakfasts, with Cantonese chee cheong fun and wu thow kou among them. Go hungry and walk the rows before you join a queue; the longest line is not automatically the one for you.

Then go up to the roof. The rebuild added a roof deck with a small urban park and garden alongside the car park, the quietest place in the building to let lunch settle (the garden shares its floor with the cars, which is about as Singapore as a park gets).

The café stop: one coffee, not a crawl

After a market lunch you won’t need a second meal, so keep the café stop to a coffee and a pastry, or a box to take home. Tiong Bahru Bakery’s neighbourhood branch is at 56 Eng Hoon Street; the brand has many branches across the island, plus a TBB Crumb & Go on Tiong Bahru Road, so make sure everyone is heading to the same one. Plain Vanilla is the alternative if the bakery is full, but its hot food stops before the café itself closes, so cake is the safer order there.

The walk: look up, keep your voice down

Use the heritage trail to understand the estate rather than just photograph it. Notice the curved corners, the stairwells and the way the low blocks sit around open space, a new idea for public housing at the time. People live here, so keep your voice down, ask before photographing anyone, and keep doorways and stairwells clear. A short loop with time to notice the details is plenty.

If you can bring a grandparent who remembers the old market, do: they will be a better guide than any trail board. Lunch, a walk and a coffee are the whole plan, and that is enough.

Good to know The heritage trail starts at Tiong Bahru Market. Tiong Bahru Bakery at 56 Eng Hoon Street opens from 7.30am on weekdays and 8am at weekends, closing at 8pm; confirm you are meeting at that branch, and check Plain Vanilla’s store page for hot-food times before you go.

Staying on? Our pick of Tiong Bahru’s cafés and market stalls…