Original Alhambra Satay in the East was part of the Satay Club

The year is 1962. You’ve just seen a Technicolor film at the Alhambra theatre. You find yourself walking along the bustling Beach Road, where a band of food vendors have set up shop. Most of them sell only one thing: satay. Before long, the noise and fumes from the adjacent bus terminal fade into the background. The scent of grilled meat hijacks your senses. Seated on a low wooden stool, you take a bite of a glistening, lightly charred satay. Life is good.

Image credit: National Archives of Singapore

I’ve never been to the historical Satay Club—I wasn’t yet born when its last true incarnation, the one at the Esplanade, was demolished in 1995. What I’ve just described was my own imagining of the place, cobbled together from stories I’ve heard from my older relatives.

And though there were varying details in these stories, all of them had one throughline: 26 hawkers, coming together to offer affordable yet delicious satay in an open-air food centre. It was the precursor to the likes of our present day Lau Pa Sat Satay Street and Satay by the Bay. It was the stuff of legends, allowing satay to make an indelible mark on Singapore’s street food scene.