Chicken Rice In The US Sold For About S$10 With Long Queues & S’poreans Aren’t Convinced

By
Dawn Lum
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Last Updated on 2017-08-06 , 11:22 am

In Singapore, chicken rice is a dish everyone would have definitely tried before. Known for is delectable roasted or steamed chicken paired with fragrant rice and the must-have combination of chilli, minced ginger and dark soy sauce, it’s no wonder why this dish is a hot favourite.

Other than the fact that it’s mouthwatering, the affordable price of $2 (or $3 if you upsize) is a popular reason why this meal would never go out of business.

But what if a chef claims to be selling the best chicken rice and pricing the dish at almost $10? Would you try it?

Meet Johnny Lee, a 29-year-old entrepreneur and chef of a store in Westfield Santa Anita, United States. Selling chicken rice at his store, Side Chick, he claims that his chicken rice is the best in the United States.

After being featured in a Los Angeles online food magazine, Lee’s chicken rice caught the attention of hungry readers, including Singaporeans.

Understandably proud of the popular chicken rice dish, it’s no surprise that we’re sceptical of whether his dish is really the best.

One well-known Singaporean restaurateur, Michel Lu shared and called the post “an unbelievable amount of drivel” while a Facebook user Eric H. Kong said that the dish “can’t compare to Singapore’s Hainan Chicken Rice”.

While some Singaporeans were more sensitive to the issue, other netizens including chef Jeremy Nguee, responded by saying that “I hope that amidst the article bashing, Singaporeans realise that the same level of effort has been undertaken by our own hawker masters to perfect so many dishes and have been doing so for many more years”.

Though Lee’s interview with the online magazine garnered many comments, the business is pretty successful with long queues of hungry people at his pop-up stall in Chinatown, Los Angeles.

Perhaps the reason why the dish was so popular, Lee told The Straits Times that he got his sauce recipe from Justin Baey, a Singapore chef working in Los Angeles.

His preferred preparation methods included “honouring” his ingredients as part of a Buddhist philosophy and the different “grains of muscle going through” the chicken breast. He also took melted chicken fat and stirred it into cooked rice, as if folding butter into the rice.

His boxes of chicken rice were sold at US$7 (S$9.65) each, selling fast at about 200 dishes in just a few hours, with customers being able to choose if they want to add a fried egg.

Though another part of the world is now blessed with the dish of chicken rice, it is known that chicken rice is a topic close to many Singaporeans’ hearts. Definitely a sensitive topic, it is not the first time another chef chose to re-create the popular dish.

Back in October, Canadian chef Matty Matheson shared his Hainanese chicken rice recipe online, except with the addition of sesame seeds, anise hyssop and edible flowers which led to appalling netizens offended at the twist in the traditional dish on how we “do not spoon the broth over the rice” and “why edible flower!?”.

Do you think the popular chicken rice dish should be kept just the way it is?

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This article was first published on goodyfeed.com

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All images from stomp.com.sg unless stated otherwise.

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Dawn Lum
Email: [email protected]