Where Did Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga Eat in Singapore? Celebrity Hawker Spots
Dua Lipa ordered chicken rice and soya beancurd. Lady Gaga sat near the Fortune Popiah stall in platform boots and a Milo Dinosaur in hand. Both really happened, both are documented, and both point at the same hawker centre.
Celebrity sightings at hawker centres get repeated online until it is hard to tell which ones actually happened. These did, and each one below is backed by a real, checkable source rather than a fan account or a rumor that outgrew itself on social media. What is striking once you line them up is how many point back to the exact same hawker centre.
Did Dua Lipa Really Eat at a Singapore Hawker Centre?
Yes: Dua Lipa named Maxwell Food Centre among her favourite food spots worldwide as part of a Google Maps collaboration, and visited it ahead of her Singapore concert on 6 November, posting about coconut juice, soya beancurd and Tian Tian's chicken rice. The visit was reported by Time Out Singapore, which is worth noting given how much of this kind of story starts as an unverified fan account rather than confirmed coverage. Naming a specific hawker centre, rather than just "Singapore street food" in general, is also what separates this from the vaguer celebrity-visit claims that circulate without any real source behind them.
What About Lady Gaga?
Lady Gaga made a surprise visit to Maxwell Food Centre in May, sitting near the Fortune Popiah stall and eating Tian Tian's Hainanese chicken rice alongside a Milo Dinosaur, dressed head to toe in black with Prada sunglasses and platform boots that made her hard to miss. The visit was covered by Mothership, and diners who happened to be seated nearby recognised her mid-meal, which is part of why the visit spread quickly online. Unlike a planned press stop with photographers arranged in advance, both this visit and Dua Lipa's read as genuinely unscheduled, ordinary diners with phones happened to be close enough to catch it.
Other Celebrities Spotted at Singapore Hawker Centres
Maxwell is not the only hawker centre with a real celebrity track record. Actress Drew Barrymore posted a video of herself eating popiah at Maxwell Food Centre in 2024, seated in front of the Ren Min drinks stall, part of a trip her family reportedly booked as a food tour, and the clip drew enough attention that several Singapore outlets picked it up within a day.
Over at Lau Pa Sat, American singer Jason Derulo tried chicken rice, ice kacang, roti prata, biryani, rojak and gong gong on camera in 2025, rating the chicken rice a perfect ten and calling it good enough to eat daily, giving ice kacang and the biryani-prata-curry combo eight out of ten each, and passing hard on the sea snails known locally as gong gong. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was spotted sampling chicken rice, satay and durian at Newton Food Centre in 2025 during a two-day Singapore visit tied to opening the Gates Foundation's first Southeast Asia office and meeting with Singapore's Prime Minister, drawing a crowd of more than eighty onlookers as he moved between stalls trying the pungent fruit for what looked like the first time. And well before any of these, chef Gordon Ramsay cooked head-to-head against three Singapore hawkers, including Tian Tian, at Newton Food Centre in 2013 as part of the SingTel Hawker Heroes Challenge, a public vote that drew more than 2.5 million votes over eight days and over a thousand spectators on the day, with the hawkers narrowly beating Ramsay by roughly six percentage points.
Recommended tours for hawker-centre visits
Singapore Small-Group Food Tour: Michelin Bibs & Iconic Hawker Dishes
A three-hour small-group walk to Michelin Bib Gourmand stalls and well-known hawker dishes.
Singapore Street Food Night Walk – Small-Group 9 Tastings Experience
A three-hour evening walk with nine street-food tastings.
Singapore Guided Foodie Walk – 5 Tastings of Local Favorites
A three-hour guided walk with five tastings of local dishes.
Singapore UNESCO Hawker Heritage Tour – Street Food & Stories
A five-hour tour focused on hawker heritage, street food and the stories behind the stalls.
Why Maxwell Food Centre Keeps Attracting Celebrity Visits
The pattern is not random. Maxwell sits in the Chinatown area within easy reach of the hotels most touring artists stay in, it is compact enough to cover in twenty minutes, and it already carries international name recognition through Tian Tian's Michelin Bib Gourmand chicken rice and past food-media coverage, which makes it a low-effort, high-payoff stop for a visiting star with a few free hours. That same combination, easy access plus one stall with a real reputation, is why our separate piece on the most famous hawker centre in Singapore gives Maxwell a strong claim to the title even though it is not the largest or the oldest. Newton Food Centre's two celebrity visits follow a similar logic: it sits close to the Orchard Road hotel belt and has long been popular with a mixed crowd of locals and tourists, which puts it directly in the path of anyone staying nearby with an evening free. Lau Pa Sat benefits from a version of the same convenience, sitting in the CBD hotel cluster with an evening satay scene that photographs well, which likely explains why it keeps turning up in visiting musicians' itineraries alongside Maxwell.
Can You Eat Where They Ate?
Yes, and that is the easy part. Maxwell Food Centre is open to the public with no reservation needed, Tian Tian's stall is clearly marked and usually has a visible queue, and the Fortune Popiah stall Lady Gaga sat near is a short walk from it. Our full Maxwell Food Centre guide covers hours, how to find specific stalls and how to time your visit around the lunch rush, which tends to be the longest queue of the day regardless of who ate there the week before. Nothing about the setup changes for a walk-in visitor: no roped-off section, no separate menu, just the same queue everyone else joins. If you would rather have a guide walk you straight to the stalls that made headlines instead of hunting for them yourself, our honest take on whether a Singapore food tour is worth booking covers exactly when that trade-off makes sense.
