Chicken rice is intergral to the meal culture of Singapore. The dish has roots deeply entrenched into the innermost strata of this country's heart of cuisine that one might be hard pressed to find anyone who hasn't heard of it or eaten it. Beside having more nuances than Baskin Robins has flavours, it's easily the most served food item around here. Yet, the subtleties ranging from the qualities of the grease in the rice to the tenderness of the chicken and the flavour of the chilli can spark the most unmanageable debates as to which stall is actually the better. Ultimately, that boils down to individual preferences and cost.
Speaking of which, food quality can be/has been associated with their price tag. One can naively assume that if something costed more, it would be probably tastier or of better quality. Or is it?
I remember delicious tasting plates of chicken rice in days gone by at $2. Today a regular plate of that would usually cost about a dollar more. Chatterbox at Mandarin Hotel has chicken rice almost ten times that. The fact that such premium chicken rice exist and possibly thrive must mean that maybe there is a more complex relationship between quality and price. And that I have maybe rambled too much.
Today was (Bugis Street) Ming Kee Chicken Rice-Porridge located at Blk 511 of Bishan St 13 in Kim San Leng coffeeshop. Dinner. The stall is located behind the bus interchange at Bishan. It's not difficult to locate because there is usually a long queue.
The above picture was sometime between 7.30-8.00pm. This, if you would believe me was not a third of the full queue. Patience is normally not a virtue associated with me. But I was psyched up for chicken rice dinner and made an exception. Joined the queue with some reluctance. The wait was approximately 20 minutes.
This is how it looked like 20 minutes after the 20 minutes that I spent on ordering dinner
It's not the first time I've had chicken rice at Ming Kee. There is a quality about the chicken rice from this stall that has kept me coming back once in a while. Their chicken had a texture between heartily chewy and tenderness. Chilli sauce has enough hooks to keep you intrigued but that's pretty much it.
From the picture above one can see that that the portions were rather generous. Compare them with the plastic utensils if you will. All at whopping total of $5 for 2 plates.
3 comments:
I have always wondered about why stores need to advertise the fact that they come from someplace else? ie. A store in Bishan would be Bugis Street Chicken Rice, a store in Bugis would be East Coast Chicken Rice and finally a store in East Coast would say? You guessed it Bishan Chicken Rice! I wonder if there is some sort of conspiracy going on among hawkers.... Bloody confusing!
Primarily for the older folks I guess because they were known to be originally famous from somewhere else. It doesn't really make sense to people like us because we never know of their hey day elsewhere...lol. I don't think I've eaten at Ming Kee outside of Bishan. They were there since I was living there and that's been some years already.
Eh...Katong Laksa is everywhere that's not Katong too...
I think its cheap if you order a plate. I ordered half chicken and it cost me $10 which is the same price everywhere else
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