What better way to celebrate the addition of Singapore's Hawker Culture into the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity than with one of the largest (and possibly most historic) hawkers in town?
Old Airport Road Food Centre may now be a bustling hotspot with 168 food stalls, serving hungry locals and tourists alike from the wee hours of the morning till late, but it got its name from the spot’s history as Singapore’s first civilian airport, Kallang Airport. The MRT station nearby is, in fact, named after the plane Douglas DC-3 or Dakota, flown by today's KLM. It survived World War II, both as a British and Japanese base, before returning to business as a commercial airport that expanded so much it had to be moved.
That left land that eventually became Kallang Estate Fresh Market & Food Centre in 1958, and was refurbished in 1971 into the two-storey building we see today.