Following on from Eating in Singapore – Part 1, we also had to make a couple of visits to a hawker centre. We were close to the Maxwell Road Hawker Centre and wandered in for lunch at around 1pm. This is one of Singapore’s best hawker centres with a food court style setting with roughly 100 food stalls. Street food starts at around the S$2.50 – S$3 mark for a plate.
Back when we were in Singapore in 2017, we had stood in line for an hour for the soya sauce chicken and rice at the famous Michelin-star hawker stall Liao Fan Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodle (Smith Street location) which had a queue around two corners and out the door! During this trip, I was more interested in the regular Hainanese chicken and rice.
Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice seems to be Singapore’s best and more popular chicken rice stall (after Anthony Bourdain’s visit and being awarded a Michelin star) so we decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, it was peak lunch hour time, the queue was out the door and around the corner, it was probably an hour wait and I was just too hungry to try it that day. I had read that Ah Tai Chicken and Rice, just three stalls down from Tian Tian, is by the former cook at Tian Tian making a similar chicken rice. The blue and white signage is even the same.
There was also no queue, only two people ahead of us, so we went up to place our orders.
I decided to get the chicken rice set (S$5) which the photos above the stall showed a whole plate of chicken, a plate of vegetables in oyster sauce, a bowl of soup, and a bowl of rice. I couldn’t help feeling disappointed and a little robbed when the food arrived as I received half of what was advertised. The chicken and vegetables were both on the same plate.
Especially when compared to Mr FPJ’s order of a plate of steamed chicken rice (S$3) where he received more chicken on his plate. Putting that aside, the chicken rice was fragrant, sweet, soft and flavoursome. The chicken was smooth, slightly cold, but meaty as it was from the chicken breast. The simple chicken broth was also tasty and comforting.
Despite the disappointing portion size compared to the advertised photos, it was a satisfying and cheap meal. Condiments included chilli sauce, soy sauce, and garlic sauce.
Other dishes available at Ah Tai included chicken feet, a plate of ‘visceral’ which looked like tendons and fat, a half or whole steamed chicken, drumsticks and wings.
We had learnt our lesson to not even attempt to try Tian Tian during lunch hour. So on one of our mornings after sleeping in, we decided to have chicken rice at Tian Tian for brunch. Yep, it was 10.30am by the time we arrived and there were already 9 people in a queue ahead of us.
There was lots of unmissable signage along the stall advertising it as one of Singapore’s best foods.
I ordered the regular chicken and rice plate. At Tian Tian, you can choose from small (S$3.50), medium (S$5) or large (S$7.80), and we chose the medium to share.
Compared to Ah Tai, I felt that the chicken was exactly the same if a little bonier. However, the rice was that little bit more fragrant and aromatic. Very tasty.
I wanted to try something else at the hawker centre, as it was going to be one of our last opportunities to try something, and decided I needed to try another signature Singaporean dish – the carrot cake. Not the sweet cake one would normally think about. Singapore’s carrot cake is a savoury dish made from rice flour and radish. No actual carrot in sight.
So to get this texture, the radish is grated and steamed, then mixed in with rice flour before being baked, cut into small pieces, then pan-fried. I’ve forgotten the name of the stall, but I’m sure a few stalls within the Maxwell Food Centre sell the dish. This version (S$3) used a thick but sweet dark soy sauce and had been stir fried with shallots. So tasty and generous portion size.
I could have easily ordered one more dish within the hawker centre, but we had a reservation for a degustation lunch (within a couple of hours of brunch) and needed to save tummy space. More on that next.
We also wandered around Singapore’s Chinatown and had lunch at Chinatown Food Street – an open air hawker centre jammed between some three-story buildings on either side with a bunch of food trucks and stalls all covered under one big roof. It looked pretty new and renovated. There were tourists everywhere but we decided to stop in and have a meal since it was a convenient location. Plus I was really craving a laksa.
We did a loop of everything first, there were only about 20 hawker stalls with some small restaurants attached to the buildings to the side. Communal seating had been set up and down the food street.
I was tempted by the chilli crab from Chinatown Crab Master, but learnt my lesson after our first time in Singapore. I hate getting my hands dirty to crack and pull out crab meat. Too onerous.
I got my chicken laksa instead with fried tofu (S$5) from Nguyen Nga Cuisine – one of the middle hawker stalls. The advertised photo looked a lot nicer than reality. It was a pretty average laksa and I know I could have gotten something far better if I’d taken the time to do more research. Oh well.
Mr FPJ ordered a combination mee goreng at another stall (can’t remember what it was) which was plentiful but again, pretty average.
Notes and tips:
- Maxwell Food Centre does not have air conditioning but there are fans.
- Try to avoid peak lunch hour – 12 noon to 2pm
- Expect queues – even more than 1 hour
- Chope culture – some locals place a pack of tissues, or some other item, on the table to ‘reserve’ seats while they go order food. I’ve seen it on a few occasions so be careful not to take someone else’s seat. It’s communal dining, however remember ‘choping’ still happens.
Maxwell Hawker Centre
1 Kadayanallur St, Chinatown, Singapore
Opening hours: Daily 8.00am to 11.00pm
Chinatown Food Street
Smith St, Singapore
Opening hours: Daily from 11.00am to 11.00pm
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