Singapore - The Five-Foot Way

The five-foot way is the covered walkway that runs the frontage of every shophouse in Singapore, a five-foot-wide colonnade built into each building at street level, mandated by Stamford Raffles' 1822 town plan so that pedestrians could move through the city in shade and out of the equatorial rain. The name has held for two centuries. The shophouse districts, Tanjong Pagar, Chinatown, Joo Chiat and Kampong Glam, carry the accumulated layering of Peranakan, Chinese, Malay, Indian and colonial cultures that the city has absorbed and continued to build from. The architecture carries them simultaneously.

Where to Stay

Raffles Hotel (1 Beach Road) was established in 1887, declared a National Monument in 1987, and returned to its 1915 form following a three-year restoration completed in 2019. The property anchors the civic district between the business centre and the Bras Basah cultural precinct. Capella Singapore (Sentosa Island), designed by Foster + Partners around two restored 1880s colonial bungalows, spreads across 30 acres with 113 rooms and villas, three outdoor pools, and a south-facing garden that has the South China Sea at its edge. The position on Sentosa means the city is ten minutes away by road while the immediate environment is quiet enough to feel genuinely separate. Duxton Reserve (165 Tanjong Pagar Road, Autograph Collection), a row of conserved shophouses with 49 rooms designed by Anouska Hempel, runs gold fans and lacquered screens against the original Chinese tile floors. It is the most precisely positioned address in the Tanjong Pagar conservation area for the intersection of neighbourhood character and considered design.

Where to Eat

Odette (1 St Andrew's Road, National Gallery Singapore, three Michelin stars, Chef-Owner Julien Royer) runs menus that move between French classical structure and the botanical and ingredient depth of Southeast Asia. The dining room looks across the civic district lawns, and lunch is the most composed way to spend a Singapore midday in a restaurant of this quality. Les Amis (1 Scotts Road, Shaw Centre, three Michelin stars, Chef Sebastien Lepinoy) has held its three stars since 2019 and is the only restaurant in Asia recognised simultaneously with the Forbes Travel Guide five-star rating and the Wine Spectator Grand Award. The combination signals a kitchen and a dining room that function at equal levels. Labyrinth (Esplanade Mall, one Michelin star, Chef Han Li Guang) takes the dishes of the hawker centre, chilli crab, chicken rice, laksa, and reframes them through contemporary technique without losing the flavour logic that made them worth reframing. The approach is specific and hard to replicate, and the restaurant has appeared on Asia's 50 Best Restaurants list consistently since 2022.

Where to Drink

Jigger & Pony (165 Tanjong Pagar Road, Amara Hotel, World's 50 Best Bars 2025, No. 9) releases highly conceptual annual menus built on a classical cocktail foundation. The bar occupies a high-ceilinged room in Tanjong Pagar, where the Duxton shophouse conservation district and the concentration of restaurants along Neil Road form an evening circuit that works around it. Nutmeg & Clove (World's 50 Best Bars 2025, No. 50) takes the city's material history as its frame, fermented fruit wines, sourdough bread, local botanicals processed through a circular economy approach, and produces drinks that connect to Singapore as a place rather than a trend. Native (World's 50 Best Bars extended list 2025, No. 84) uses hyper-local ingredients, turmeric and laksa leaves and foraged regional botanicals, in a way that makes the sourcing the argument rather than the decoration.

How to Move

The Mass Rapid Transit covers the commercial districts with efficiency, but the shophouse neighbourhoods, Tanjong Pagar, Tiong Bahru and Joo Chiat and Katong to the east, reward walking at the pace the five-foot way was built for. Tiong Bahru is a 1930s art deco housing estate that now functions as the city's calmest café and bookshop quarter. Joo Chiat holds the densest concentration of Peranakan architecture outside Penang and the shopfront restaurants that have been serving the same dishes for two generations. The hawker centres, Tiong Bahru Market, Maxwell Food Centre near Chinatown, Lau Pa Sat in the financial district, open from early morning, and the city's culinary depth is as accessible there as anywhere with three stars. The equatorial evening is the time to be outside, when the heat has fallen slightly and the five-foot ways fill with the business of the neighbourhood returning to itself.