Getting to Habibi-san: MRT, Parking and Reservations

Two addresses, two neighbourhoods, and a great deal of the internet still pointing at the wrong one. This is the practical page: where we are, how to get there, where to leave the car, and how to get a table.

Habibi-san is at 29 Hamilton Road, Singapore 209198, in Jalan Besar. Li’l Habibi is at 55 Haji Lane, Singapore 189248, inside Bar Stories. Haji Lane was our original address, we moved the main restaurant to Hamilton Road, and a lot of listings never got the memo — so if you booked from a guide or an aggregator, check which street you have been sent to before you set off. The move itself is a longer story.

The door you are looking for

Hamilton Road is a short residential-feeling street of shophouses off Jalan Besar, and we are not a shopfront with a glass wall. Look for the number 29 and a small dark plaque reading HABIBI-SAN beside the door, with the sign hanging out over the pavement above it. If you are walking and watching your phone rather than the buildings, you will go past it. Most people do once.

By MRT

Bendemeer (DT23), on the Downtown Line, is the closest — about five minutes on foot. It is the one to use if you are coming from anywhere the Downtown Line already serves, and it is close enough that it is not really a walk, just a corner.

Lavender (EW11), on the East-West Line, is about ten minutes. Slightly further, but for a lot of Singapore it is the easier line to be on, and the walk cuts through Jalan Besar proper rather than the industrial edge — a better ten minutes than the map suggests, particularly before dinner.

Neither walk is difficult. Both are worth two minutes more than you think in the rain, which in this city is a planning assumption rather than a warning.

By bus

Services 13, 133, 145, 147A, 23, 67 and 857 all run close by. If you are coming from the north or the east, the bus is frequently the less annoying option — Jalan Besar is well served and the stops are close enough that the walk from any of them is short.

If you are driving

There is no car park attached to the restaurant. Park along Hamilton Road itself, or on Tyrwhitt Road one street over, both of which are ordinary street parking.

Two honest notes about that. Street parking on these two streets is finite and the evening is exactly when everyone else wants it, so give yourself a margin rather than arriving at 7.29pm for a 7.30pm booking. And if the evening involves the bar list, the MRT is the better plan for reasons that have nothing to do with parking.

Booking a table

We would book. Reservations for Hamilton Road run through Chope and the link sits on our reservations page; the phone is +65 6348 2467.

The hours to book against: dinner is 5pm to 11pm, Tuesday to Sunday. Brunch is 11am to 2.30pm, Saturday and Sunday only. We are closed Mondays. Our Chope page gives last orders for dinner as 9.45pm. Brunch books through the same Chope link as dinner: when we checked on 22 October 2026 it was offering Saturday tables from 11am. (An earlier version of this page told you to ring for brunch instead of booking online. That was wrong, and we have taken it out.)

Everything else people ask before booking — whether we are halal, what pork is on the menu, what we can do about dietary restrictions — is answered plainly in our FAQ.

What time to actually turn up

The service window is six hours long and it is not the same restaurant at both ends of it, so it is worth choosing rather than defaulting.

An early booking — five or six — gets you a quieter room, a grill that is not three deep in tickets, and the best odds on the dishes that take real time. Our Lebanese charcoal chicken is billed on the menu as “45 mins of loving”, and it is not a dish to decide on at the last minute. Dinner last orders are 9.45pm, so a table that arrives late and then decides it wants that chicken is having a different evening than it planned. If it is on your list, order it as your first decision rather than your last.

A later booking gets you the room at full volume, which is the version most people mean when they picture an izakaya. Both are good. They are just not interchangeable, and the difference is worth thirty seconds when you pick a slot.

One thing to know either way: the mezze comes out fast and the charcoal does not. That gap is the point of the format rather than a fault in it — order dips and bread early so there is something on the table while the fire does its work.

Getting to Li’l Habibi instead

Different night, different plan. Li’l Habibi is our kushiyaki counter at 55 Haji Lane, in Kampong Glam, hosted inside Bar Stories.

MRT: Bugis (EW12/DT14) is about five minutes away and is the obvious choice; Nicoll Highway (CC5) on the Circle Line is about twelve. Buses: 100, 12E, 170, 2, 48, 57, 80 and 851E. Parking: along Arab Street, or the Aliwal Street car park — Haji Lane itself is a narrow pedestrian lane, so you will not be parking on it.

Hours are 5.30pm to 10.30pm, Tuesday to Sunday. Evenings only. People do turn up on Haji Lane in the afternoon expecting a cafe, and there are plenty of those on the street — just not that door. We wrote up the ones worth sitting down in, in our Haji Lane cafe guide.

Booking works differently there: because it is Bar Stories’ building, reservations go through their system rather than ours, and the link is on the same reservations page. Book through that link: it goes straight to Bar Stories’ own booking system.

Which room do you actually want tonight?

Hamilton Road if you want to sit down properly: the full charcoal menu, the Biggies, the omakase, the wine and sake list, and a room built around the grill. It is the dinner-with-a-plan option, and the only one of the two that does brunch. It is also the newer of the two rooms by five years, which the timeline explains better than a directions page can.

Haji Lane if the night is already moving: skewers, dips, a drink built for you rather than ordered off a list, and a street that does not stop at 10pm. It is the start-or-end-of-the-night option — the bar guide and the food guide cover what is around it.

Either way: the location page has the maps, the gallery shows what you are walking into, and if you would rather know what to order before you arrive, start with what everyone else keeps ordering.

Re-checked 22 October 2026: the MRT, bus and parking details for both rooms against our own location and Li’l Habibi pages, and the opening hours, last orders and brunch booking against our Chope page.