THE sight of hungry diners tucking into Chinese roast pork rice in an idyllic English countryside setting is no longer a fantasy.
It happens every day in food court operator Koufu's one-month-old outlet at Anchorpoint Shopping Centre in Alexandra Road.
Painted bright yellow and with exposed red-brick walls, warm orange lighting and a flickering faux fireplace to simulate ye olde England, this food court is a departure from Koufu's 23 pastel-coloured, cookie-cutter, utilitarian outlets.
Gone are the days when food courts impressed consumers simply because they offer affordable hawker fare in an air-conditioned venue.
They are shedding their image as drab, no-frills eateries for spiffier makeovers.
These fashionable food courts can look like beaches, 19th-century European libraries or a nostalgic black-and-white Asian cinema.
Food court operators say the reincarnation is prompted by the growing competition among them.
With more players muscling their way into the industry and more food courts opening in shopping malls - some malls even have two - operators feel the pressure to make their outlets stand out.
One of the newer operators, Mr Alan Lee, 54, managing director of the Banquet chain of 20 halal food courts, tells LifeStyle: 'You can say I'm kiasu (Hokkien for being afraid to lose out). I want to keep coming up with innovative offerings to beat my competitors and stay ahead of the game.'
He and others are doing so not just cosmetically with newfangled designs, but also by beefing up their food fare.
Restaurant-owned food court stalls are the flavour of the moment.
Lotus Thai Restaurant in Murray Terrace near Maxwell Road, for example, has opened 11 outlets named Lotus Thai Viet in various food courts since 2004.
Chinese restaurant Fortunate in Toa Payoh has dim sum outlets in all three Food Republic food courts.
And Manna Korean Restaurant in Telok Ayer Street has no fewer than seven outlets in various food courts, such as Kopitiam in Tampines Mall.
The presence of restaurants in food courts looks set to grow further with Banquet's new 'mini-restaurant' concept for its second food court outlet in Jurong Point Shopping Centre, to open next January.
The 10 food stalls in its 10,500 sq ft store will be run by restaurants, including a popular fish and chip chain from Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, and the hotel restaurant in the Marco Polo Xiamen, China, which is known for its Cantonese fare.
Since the first food court, Picnic, opened in the now-defunct Scotts Shopping Centre in 1985, the number of food courts here has grown by leaps and bounds.
While there are no official figures on the number of such outlets, major food court players including Food Junction, Kopitiam, Banquet, Koufu and Food Republic have no fewer than 111 outlets among them.
In general, each food court sees some 2,000 to 8,000 customers daily. The annual turnover for food court operators ranges anywhere from more than $10 million for Horizon Foodmalls with one outlet in Causeway Point, to some $120 million for the Kopitiam group's 69 outlets.
Those in the late 1980s were all about functionality - providing hawker fare in clean, air-conditioned comfort.
So when themed food courts were introduced in the 1990s, this novel concept was quickly replicated. Kopitiam's 1998 outlet in Plaza Singapura, for example, evoked a tropical jungle.
But minimalist designs became popular in the new millennium. Food courts were streamlined to feature bright, clean lines.
It took the retro dining concept of Wisma Atria's Food Republic, which opened in 2004 to warm response, to put themed food courts back in vogue.
Rivals have cottoned on to the formula.
Banquet is opening a new black-and-white Asian cinema themed outlet in Carrefour hypermarket in Suntec City Mall by the end of this year.
For Koufu, its English countryside food court in Anchorpoint is meant to complement the mall's revamped look, which evokes a rustic European village.
Mr Pang Lim, 52, its managing director, has come to appreciate that 'a jazzed-up look helps to visually lure customers to the food court' and is looking to redesign its other outlets around themes when they are up for renovation.
He and others say they do not feel that the trend will become passe.
'If you do it tastefully and in the right location where the concept resonates with the outlet's demographics, a themed food court should still be a crowd-puller,' says Mr Alden Tan, 46, managing director of Kopitiam.
Food consultant K.F. Seetoh, 44, says that food courts have 'upped the dining experience one notch' but laments that 'the quality and craftsmanship of some food court offerings have deteriorated'.
He says: 'When hawkers expand along with food courts, some are unable to maintain strict control over their food and the quality suffers.'
In a bid to improve the quality and variety of the fare in food courts, operators are looking to bring restaurants into food courts.
'Restaurant names spell premium quality to customers,' says Mr Tan of Kopitiam.
But for all the variety of food and exotic designs that food courts are coming up with, the yardstick of measurement used by consumers here appears to be the taste of the food they offer.
Miss Vanessa Tan, 25, a bank manager, says: 'I patronise the Hokkien mee stall in Wisma Atria's Food Republic simply because the dish there tastes good.'
Mr Vincent Gabriel, 65, a freelance food consultant, says: 'I can stomach higher prices charged for restaurant food in food courts and well-designed outlets do lure me in to spend my money.
'But if the quality of the food served is bad, none of the above matters because it'll be the last time I patronise that food court.'
