Any country that bans chewing gum can’t be all bad, particularly when the same controlling attitude also created some of the world’s most vibrant street food.

Decades ago, Singapore’s bureaucrats decided every food vendor in the country must be inspected, licensed and ultimately moved off the streets into designated eating zones.

What might sound like heavy-handed officialdom resulted instead in an explosion of culinary brilliance as each of Singapore’s many cultures – Chinese, Malay, Indian and the local hybrid known as Pera-nakan – vied to outdo each other in quality.

Today, there are more than 40,000 food hawkers crammed into this tiny island, all licensed and remarkably safe, many serving dishes that exist nowhere else in the world.

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Wandering down Smith Street, in the midst of Chinatown, you’ll encounter vendors selling simple skewers of chicken, lamb or shrimp, barbecued in front of your eyes over a brazier of crackling charcoal embers and served with a spicy peanut-and-pineapple sauce – six skewers cost about £3.

At the stall next door, you could sample fried carrot cake: not actually a cake at all or made of carrots, it’s a patty of rice flour and shredded white radish, stir-fried with garlic, eggs and sweet soy sauce. Or, if you’re feeling more adventurous, try a fish-head curry – a bowl of grouper heads from which you pick the cheeks, lips and eyes (the connoisseur’s choice), the whole thing simmered in a spicy red gravy with okra and tomatoes. Whichever you choose, simply pay and take your purchase to a nearby table, where someone will appear to offer you chopsticks and drinks, and even clear up when you’ve finished.

Different areas specialise in different dishes. On the East Coast, you’ll find seafood hawkers – the unofficial national dish, chilli crab, originated here in the 1950s, when Madame Cher Yam Tian set up a stall on the beach, cooking live crabs bythe light of a kerosene lamp. On the West Coast, all of 30 miles away, you’ll find dishes more Indonesian in style, such as otak-otak – fresh mackerel pounded and marinated with coconut milk, ground chilli, onions, lemongrass, blue ginger and turmeric, the whole mixture wrapped in a fresh banana leaf and left to sizzle over hot coals.

In the middle of the island are Chinatown, Little India and areas such as Gey-lang, originally the Malay enclave. But wherever you go, you’ll find a profusion of styles and flavours unlike anything you’ve ever eaten before. Where to feast: ease yourself in with a visit to the air-conditioned 900-seat food court on Orchard Road, the main shopping street – although you may still need to queue for Thye Hong’s char kway teow, a fiendishly complicated stir-fry of noodles, beansprouts, fishcake and Chinese sausage.

But before you leave Singapore, do as the locals do and go on at least onemakancrawl in an area such as Balestier Road, where dozens of vendors offer different versions of bak kut teh– pork ribs in a garlic broth. The one sold by 333 is highly recommended – although, confusingly, it’s now situated at number 325. But that’s the street-food spirit: if in doubt, just follow your nose. What to drink: rather than alcohol, try one of the carbonated soft drinks made by Yeo’s, such as chrysanthemum tea, coconut juice, sugar cane or grass jelly – the last one complete “with cooling bits of jelly”. Most Western tourists stick to Diet Coke, the sweetness of which actually works quite well with spicy food.

When to go: June and July are the hottest months, although the humidity is generally a greater problem than the heat. Autumn and winter see a succession of festivals, from the Muslim Hari Raya to the Chinese Lunar New Year – a great advantage of having such a mixture of cultures is that there’s generally some sort of celebration going on.

Need to know

Thye Hong Fried Prawn Mee & Char Kway Teow, FoodRepublic, 4thFloor, Wisma Atria, 435Orchard Road, Singapore. 333 Bak Kut The, 325 Balestier Road, Singapore. A magazine on the hawker scene, The Makansutra (as in the Kama Sutra, but for makan or food), offers food safaris for visitors, via its website, www.makansutra.com

Anthony Capella’s latest novel, The Various Flavours of Coffee, is out now in paperback, published by Sphere at £6.99

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