Quick Bites: Hawker 45

Named after the lively street food stalls of South East Asia, Hawker 45 serves flavor-packed, hawker-style dishes inspired by chef-owner Laila Bazham’s native Philippines, as well as Korea, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Laos. Bazham is Filipino-Brazilian but has trained in kitchens around the globe, from Manila, Dubai and Singapore to San Sebastián and Barcelona. She has formed a team at Hawker 45 that she proudly proclaims is “without ego” and is dedicated to one thing: offering guests an unforgettable culinary experience. Here, there are no waiters, the chefs do it all—cooking, serving and scrubbing plates when needed. 

The menu at Hawker 45 is broken down into five sections: snacks, seafood, vegetables/salads, meat and desserts. Bazham respects and cherishes classic cuisines, but always tries to evolve with her recipes, whether it’s applying new techniques to traditional dishes or refining rustic food to elevate it to a higher gastronomic level. 

We began our meal with a fresh, citric Filipino kinilaw, a ceviche-style dish with ruby-red cubes of Atlantic tuna, coconut, avocado and lime. Fresh coconut pulp is used in place of the typical coconut vinegar, giving a rich and subtle sweetness to this delicate starter. 

Another highlight was the ‘Crying Tiger’ salad—grilled veal flank that maintained a nice fattiness, served with a tamarind-chili emulsion, mesclun greens and pickled vegetables. I was surprised and delighted by the intensity of the dish’s slow-building heat, which left my ears tingling as I gulped down a Hoptimista IPA from Barcelona’s Edge Brewing.

In the Philippines, an adobo marinade is most traditionally used with chicken, but at Hawker 45, culinary traditions are there to be broken. The grilled and slow-simmered octopus in adobo with roasted sweet potato purée, soy-vinegar emulsion and "onion textures" was deeply satisfying and cooked to perfection. 

The parade of dishes moved on, meandering from the streets of Singapore with the sambal of silky butter fish, shrimp paste and green mango, to Korean barbecue houses with kalbi short ribs, rice cakes and pepper threads. A must-try to finish your meal is the "street ice cream’, coconut ice cream sandwiched between brioche buns and filled with salted caramel pork rinds—an assault of sweet and savory, built to send hedonistic diners out on a giddy high.