The food: Chicken Rice

Where to find it:  HongKong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodle in the Chinatown Hawker Centre

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Mid-workday lunches can get boring as hell. Tupperware tuna and half-frozen microwaved burritos can only take so much Sriracha sauce before a meal begins to look atomic¹. Combine that with the churning heat of Singapore’s sultry sun, and some days can take its toll on the working man. As I’ve noted in previous posts on Singapore, thank goodness it provides a bounty of culinary refuges—most notably, the hawker centre. Its rows upon rows of food stalls provide a Singaporean sanctuary for the everyman food connoisseur. Perfect for the nine-to-fiver who expects greatness out of the fiver he spends on a meal.

Singapore’s chicken rice epitomizes that pinnacle of price and palate. People shell out just $2 SGD (or $1.50 USD as of the date of this publication) to get everything you see in the picture above. Everything. The works. Soya sauce chicken, chicken broth steamed rice, ever-so-slightly steam-softened peanuts, peppers, chili sauce, soy sauce, dark soya sauce and a side bowl of steaming chicken soup stock.

Although inexpensive, this ain’t your canned chicken and kibble crap you feed Whiskers. The chicken gets cooked and melts into a stock of ginger and garlic. The ensuing chicken broth later cooks the rice, infusing its smooth flavor into each grain. Pair the chicken and rice with a steaming bowl of chicken soup stock, and a hungry worker gets a full-on, nutritional chicken meal with real flavor.

By the way, this flavor gets popular. The waiting line for an order of this plate can get 20+ people deep. So, wait until your work week slows on a Food Friday to sample this fine, frugal food stall. TGIF, right?

In Singapore, food is anything but boring and ‘square.’

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¹ However, with the correct balance of Sriracha sauce to food, anything can taste delicious to the point of near-Nirvana.
² Singaporean locals all agree: long lines = good food. And fun fact: Singaporean Chicken Rice ranks 45 on World’s 50 most delicious foods complied by CNN Go in 2011.
³ JOB OPPORTUNITY: The above picture comes straight out of another scene from my travel & food web series I’m filming in Asia. Longa Travels Productions is currently seeking (documentary/trailer) editors for post-production. If you’re interested in learning more, then please send an email to [email protected] asking that you’d like to learn more.