Right after Michelin-star chef and TV personality Gordon Ramsay conceded defeat at the recent SingTel Hawker Heroes Challenge in early July, hawkers (40 of them) are in the spotlight again. The Singapore Favourite Food Village (SFFV) hosted a 10-day celebration of local delights beginning Jul 12.

Previously called the Singapore Food Festival, the newly renamed SFFV marks the 20th anniversary of celebrating twice as many of our country’s most mouth-watering hawker foods right next to Marina Bay Sands.

What else is different this year is Singaporeans have their say in an online public vote for the top 20 food vendors. In addition, the Singapore Food & Beverage Alliance organising committee and advisory panel brought in another 20 vendors.

What’s new about the SFFV this year is that visitors can purchase a limited edition Singapore Favourite Food 2013 NETS FlashPay card for $12 with $7 in stored value, which means, you get the card for $5. Although it is a smart way of integrating the card service into their event, it is still unlikely to see these services in Hawker places anytime soon. However, foodies with the limited edition card can expect to get a 5% rebate for all food and beverages stalls island-wide (provided the stalls offers the service).

Let well-liked dishes that all Singaporeans have a soft spot for such as, Hokkien prawn noodles, Popiah, and Carrot cake fill your senses as you find yourself roaming around the almost 1 football field sized large tented area for the next 10 minutes deciding what to order as you find yourself spoiled for choices.

So to save you that trouble, here’s what UrbanWire thought were the top 5 popular foods in the SFFV:

As SFFV aims to gather all of Singapore’s most loved foods, not only popular hawker stalls were rounded up, but other well-known restaurants were there as well.

For starters, Moi Lum Restaurant sells authentic Chinese cuisine such as their signature Fish Maw Soup. As with all Fish Maw Soups, texture is of utmost importance, and you can slurp down the soft slippery bits of fish maw easily. At $4 a serving, the soup’s served hot with the sweet yet sour aroma of the soup mixed with vinegar and pepper. Sadly, the overall taste didn’t match up to the aroma of the soup that day. We’d would have expected more of the signature dish. Sure, the texture and aroma was great, but somehow it was lacking in its flavour, which bordered on bland even with the vinegar and pepper added in. But benefit of doubt should probably be given to Moi Lum restaurant considering its reviews online are nothing short of great even for its other dishes like their Crispy Fried Chicken and Golden Coin Beancurd.

Even at 5pm (which isn’t even close to the dinner peak hour) more than half of the early birds had a plate of Lau Fu Zi’s Fried Kway Teow on their tables.

The brown stir-fried broad rice noodle dish typically found in Old Airport Road Food Centre starts out sweet with a slight spicy aftertaste; perhaps due to the chef’s secret sauce, which was much different compared to other sauces used elsewhere. The noodles were springy and soft; and unlike other Fried Kway Teow, that sometimes turns out too dry or too mushy like the Apollo Fresh Cockle Fried Kway Teow sold at Marine Parade, Lau Fu Zi’s Fried Kway Teow was just right. Not to forget, the bloody cockles are something you definitely wouldn’t want to live without. At $6 a plate, it’s a bit expensive for hawker food but nevertheless worth it for the generous portions of noodles, sausages, and cockles they gave.

Next, UrbanWire decided to grab Fortune Food’s Popiah, which can also be known as a non-fried spring roll rolled in a thin paper-like skin. Specialising in Popiah and Kueh Pie Tie, Fortune Food beat other famous Popiah stalls such as My Cosy Corner at Coronation Plaza, and Ann Chin, which are also from Chinatown Complex Market and Food Center. Flavoured with the deliciously sweet sauce that Fortune Food’s Popiah has, and added to the fact that the chopped peanuts made it extra tasty, this dish will change the minds of those even with an aversion to Popiah. Added to that, its handmade Popiah skin is so thin and soft, you can just pop it into your mouth and the slice of Popiah disappears into your tummy almost immediately. Served with turnips, cucumber slices, chopped peanuts, fried egg bits, coriander and garlic, this mix of deliciously prepared ingredients, along with their sweet sauce and chilli paste, really packs a punch leaving you wanting more.

Even after rounds of local dishes, you still won’t have neared the end of the list of stalls, but Zhengxin’sFried Hokkien Mee was so good, it was worth cramming that bit more. The sour smell of the lime emphasizes the fragrance of the Hokkien Mee so superbly, and it didn’t disappoint. The noodles, cooked in a flavourful prawn stock, was so springy  it almost bounces as you chew on it…in a good way of course. At $4.80, it was one of the more affordable choices in SFFV, and it was so flavourful – the ample amount of squid, prawn and fried eggs were all cooked in the prawn stock that’s usually boiled with discarded prawn heads, garlic, onion, ginger and salt. Zhengxin’s Fried Hokkien Mee will definitely get your appetite going after that first spoonful.

But the highlight of SFFV has to be Star Young Kwang BBQ Seafood. The Salted Egg Pork Ribs were a must try as it is one of their most popular dishes. While many stalls have, in recent years, used salted egg sauce to season crabs and prawns, this has to be the best-salted egg dish UrbanWire has ever tried, and we’ve tried a number of them. The $12 dish has a unique texture of Liu Sha Bao or molten custard fillings in steamed buns to its special sauce, leaving a slightly sandy feel on your tongue – Yum. It doesn’t hurt when the chef’s utterly generous with their tender and succulent pork ribs. To top it off, the dish just smelled so darn good.

All in all, SFFV was a great way to pay homage to Singapore’s best hawker foods. Although some were more expensive than what you would have paid for at their original locations, you don’t easily get such a good selection of the best.

As Ramsay says, “No table cloths, no fancy wine cellars, no 25 waiters hovering over you… if you want the real food in Singapore get yourself to a hawker stall.”