FOOD PAIRING
01
Fortune Centre has spent years quietly earning its reputation as one of Singapore’s biggest clusters of vegetarian restaurants under one roof. Long before izakaya menus and craft beer taps found their way into the building, this was already the place health-conscious diners pointed to when they wanted a proper meatless meal without hunting across town for it. That identity hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s just sharing the building now.
Walk the corridors of Fortune Centre today and you’ll still find that original character intact: a dense concentration of vegetarian eateries that has made the building a genuine destination for plant-based eating in Singapore, not just a token stop. It’s worth knowing what’s actually there, especially if your idea of Fortune Centre starts and ends with its newer additions.
Three names do a lot of the heavy lifting here, and each one approaches vegetarian food from a different angle.
New Green Pasture Cafe, tucked away on the fourth level, has built a quiet following for its organic-leaning dishes served in a setting that feels distinctly calmer than the rest of the building. It’s the kind of place you find once and then keep coming back to, less about spectacle and more about doing a smaller menu well.
Herbivore takes the opposite approach, reworking Japanese cuisine into fully meatless versions using fresh, organic ingredients. It’s a clever bit of positioning given where the building has headed more recently, proof that plant-based food and Japanese flavours aren’t mutually exclusive at Fortune Centre.
Tian Yuan Healthy Vegetarian Food rounds out the trio as the long-runner of the group, serving up hearty Chinese vegetarian noodle and rice dishes that have kept regulars coming back for years. If you want something filling rather than fussy, this is usually where people end up.
Together, these three represent the backbone of what’s made Fortune Centre a name among vegetarians and vegans looking for variety, rather than a single meat-free option buried somewhere in a food court.
Much of the vegetarian cooking inside Fortune Centre leans towards Chinese Buddhist vegetarian traditions, built around the kind of hearty rice and noodle dishes that have anchored the building’s reputation for decades. Alongside that older, more established style, a newer wave of contemporary vegan cafes has moved in, bringing lighter, organic-focused menus into the mix.
The result is a building that covers more ground than most people expect. You can sit down to a traditional Buddhist vegetarian spread on one floor, then find something closer to a modern plant-based cafe just a short walk away. That spread of styles is a big part of why Fortune Centre has held its position as a serious option for the best food at Fortune Centre, rather than relying on one headline tenant to carry the whole building’s reputation.
Here’s where things get interesting. Fortune Centre’s vegetarian scene isn’t operating in isolation anymore. The building has also become home to a newer wave of izakaya and craft beer tenants, adding a second, distinctly different identity alongside the one it’s always been known for.
That’s not a contradiction. It’s what makes the building worth paying attention to. You’ve got decades-old vegetarian eateries doing exactly what they’ve always done, sitting a few doors down from a more recent craft beer bar and izakaya scene built around rotating beer selections and shared plates. Fortune Centre isn’t trying to be one thing anymore, and it’s better for it. A building that can hold onto its original vegetarian identity while making genuine room for something as different as craft beer and izakaya food isn’t one-note. It’s layered, and that layering is exactly what makes a return visit worth it.
If you’re spending an evening in the building, that mix opens up some genuinely good combinations. Start with a vegetarian meal upstairs, then make your way to a craft beer spot that pairs beer with a proper meal to finish the night properly. Few buildings in Singapore let you build an evening quite like that without stepping outside.
Fortune Centre rewards a bit of exploring rather than beelining for one shop. If vegetarian food is what brought you here, give New Green Pasture Cafe, Herbivore or Tian Yuan a visit and see which style of cooking suits your evening.
If you’re curious about the building’s other side, Craft Beer by Ki-setsu is a craft beer bar Singapore drinkers have been adding to their Fortune Centre routine, with a rotating selection and food built for sharing over a few rounds. Either way, the building has more going on than its street-facing shopfront lets on. It’s worth the walk upstairs to find out.
