A Day on Haji Lane: Shopping, Food and Cocktails

Haji Lane is about 150 metres long. You can walk it in two minutes, which is why so many people do exactly that, photograph a mural and leave — and why they come away thinking it is smaller than it is.

Done properly it is a full day, because the street runs on a schedule. Almost nothing opens early. The shops come up late morning, the cafés hold the middle of the day, and the whole lane changes character around six when the shutters that were shop fronts become bar fronts. We run Li’l Habibi at number 55, so we watch this happen most evenings.

Here is how to time it.

First, the geography

Haji Lane sits inside Kampong Glam, running parallel to Arab Street and Beach Road, with Bali Lane at its northern end. Bugis MRT is a five-minute walk. Everything in this itinerary is within about 400 metres of everything else, so nothing here needs a taxi.

One correction worth making before you go, because it trips up a lot of visitors: plenty of guides and map listings still show Habibi-san at 55 Haji Lane. That address is now Li’l Habibi, our kushiyaki-and-drinks little sibling. The main Habibi-san restaurant moved to 29 Hamilton Road in Jalan Besar in October 2025. Two different rooms, two different nights out — and if you turn up on Haji Lane expecting the charcoal grill, you will be in the wrong postcode.

10am–11am: coffee, before anything is open

The lane’s earliest riser is Good Luck at 9 Haji Lane, whose coffee bar opens at 8am (the beerhouse side runs to midnight, with food from 11am). It is genuinely the only reason to be here before ten. Updated 10 September 2026: those times are first-party and the doubt is largely gone. The operator rebuilt its website this week and the new contact page still gives “GOOD LUCK & GOOD LUCK COFFEE BAR | 9 HAJI LANE” as its own address, separate from Fatt Choy at number 10, with the coffee bar at 8am to 3pm and the bar at 8am to midnight with food from 11am. The sister site’s FAQ still says the two have merged at number 10, but it also disagrees with Good Luck’s page about Fatt Choy’s own hours and phone number, so we read it as a page nobody has updated. If the 8am coffee is the whole reason you are coming, ring first.

The French American Bakery at 49 Haji Lane opens at 9.30am and runs to 5.30pm daily, according to its own website (corrected 18 October 2026; we previously printed 11am to 7pm) — pastries and a hot chocolate that has done a great deal of work on Singaporean social media over the past year.

Use this hour to walk the murals while the light is good and the street is empty. It is the only time of day you will photograph them without somebody else’s photoshoot in the frame. We go deeper on the daytime options in our guide to Haji Lane cafés worth sitting down for.

11am–1pm: the shops, which is the actual point of the street

Haji Lane’s reason for existing is independent retail — owner-run boutiques, vintage, records, small local labels. Most open around 11am or noon. A working loop:

• Vintagewknd, 41 Haji Lane — reworked vintage, open daily 12pm–9pm.
• The Digicam Depository, 43 Haji Lane — secondhand compact digital cameras, riding the Y2K revival hard. Tuesday to Friday 2pm–9pm, weekends from noon, closed Mondays.
• Musicology Records, 66 Haji Lane — vinyl, Monday to Saturday 12.30pm–8.30pm, Sunday from 1pm.
• Bella Kini, 69 Haji Lane — swimwear, daily 12pm–8pm.
• Crafune, #02-01, 38 Haji Lane — leather workshop, daily 11am–6pm. Book ahead if you want to make something rather than buy it.

Do not build a morning around a specific shop without checking it that day. Retail here turns over faster than the guides do, and a fair number of the boutiques listed in year-old articles have since become something else.

1pm: lunch, and the one sit-down decision

Fatt Choy Eating House at 10 Haji Lane is the most reliable lunch on the street — modern Singaporean cooking, house-brewed beers, open daily 11am to 10.30pm. It sits directly opposite its sister operation, Good Luck, which means the two of them effectively own that end of the lane.

If you would rather eat properly and come back for the shops afterwards, the wider Kampong Glam options — Beach Road, Kandahar Street, North Bridge Road — are all a short walk, and we have set them out neighbourhood by neighbourhood in our Haji Lane food guide.

2pm–5pm: the slow middle

This is the stretch people misjudge. It is hot, the street is at its busiest, and the sensible move is to sit down for a couple of hours rather than keep walking.

Coffee Donkee at 51 Haji Lane is the kissaten-style option — a small room, seriously made coffee — though its own site publishes no hours and the listings vary, so check before making a special trip. The French American Bakery is open until 5.30pm if you want a second sit-down, and Fatt Choy serves straight through the afternoon, so a late lunch there is the other honest way to fill this stretch.

Corrected 18 October 2026: this hour used to send you to three more places, and all three have closed. Cafe Margaret on Bali Lane says on its own Instagram that its last day was 31 March 2025, so it was already shut when we first wrote this, and we missed it. NestCha at 68 Haji Lane no longer has a working website, and Google lists the shop as permanently closed; so does Gelato Garden at 65, which never had a website of its own. Our Haji Lane cafés guide has the full list.

5pm–7pm: the hour the street changes

Dusk is when Haji Lane is at its best, and most day-trippers have already left. The shops are still open, the light is good, and the bars are setting up. If you only have three hours in Kampong Glam, spend them here.

7pm onwards: drinks

The lane’s drinking is better than its reputation suggests, and it splits into distinct rooms rather than a single strip.

• Bar Stories, 55–57A Haji Lane — bespoke cocktails, no menu; you describe what you like and the bartender builds it.
• Blu Jaz, 11 Bali Lane — live music, three floors, hours that follow the line-up rather than a fixed schedule. Corrected 31 August 2026: we previously printed fixed closing times here (1.30am on weeknights, 2am at weekends). Our own bars guide dropped those on 24 August and this page was not updated at the same time, which was our mistake. The venue’s own site is now serving a hosting suspension notice, so we cannot confirm any hours for it today. Check the night’s programme.
• Piedra Negra, 241 Beach Road — the loud Mexican corner at the end of the lane, daily to midnight, and the most reliable outdoor seat in the area.

We have written these up properly, along with what to drink and in what order, in our guide to the best bars on Haji Lane.

8pm: dinner at ours

Li’l Habibi sits at 55 Haji Lane, hosted inside Bar Stories, open Tuesday to Sunday 5.30pm to 10.30pm. It is the small, skewer-led version of what we do — kushiyaki off the coals, a few mezze, drinks that take the evening seriously without the room doing the same. Serious food, never a serious mood, as our menus put it.

It is not halal — we serve pork and alcohol at both our venues — and it is worth saying plainly in a neighbourhood where a lot of the food around us is.

If you want the full charcoal-grill version instead, that is the Hamilton Road restaurant, fifteen minutes away by cab, open Tuesday to Sunday from 5pm. You can book a table or look at the menu first.

Practical notes

Mondays are quiet, and not in a good way. A significant share of the lane — ourselves included — closes. Do not plan this itinerary on a Monday.

Weekend afternoons are the busiest window. If you want photographs of the murals without crowds, come on a weekday morning; if you want atmosphere, come at dusk.

Check anything you are travelling for. Singapore F&B moves fast, and this street moves faster than most — Momolato at 34 Haji Lane closed permanently in April 2026 and still appears in live guides. Everything listed above was checked on 15 August 2026 and re-checked on 31 August 2026. On that re-check, three entries were confirmed on the venue’s own website and are current: Vintagewknd (41 Haji Lane, Singapore 189234, daily 12pm to 9pm), Bar Stories (55-57A Haji Lane, Singapore 189248, 5.30pm to 10.30pm, Tuesdays to Sundays) and Piedra Negra (241 Beach Road, noon to midnight Sunday through Thursday, to 1am Friday and Saturday). The rest of the shops and cafes on this page either publish no hours on their own sites or have no reachable site at all, so treat their times as a guide rather than a guarantee, and assume nothing on a Monday. Re-checked 18 October 2026: Good Luck’s and Fatt Choy’s hours are unchanged on their own contact page, the French American Bakery’s own site gives 9.30am to 5.30pm, and three cafés this page used to recommend have closed (see the 2pm–5pm section).

Getting here: Bugis MRT (Downtown and East West lines), then five minutes on foot via Ophir Road. Driving is a bad idea; parking in Kampong Glam on a weekend evening is a competitive sport.