Update 19 July 2019. Hawker Chan's soya sauce chicken in Singapore's Chinatown Complex, of course, doesn't need any further introduction - the humble little stall catapulted to world fame when it became the world's first hawker stall to clinch a Michelin Star back in 2016.
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I had tasted and blogged about Hawker Chan's soya sauce chicken stall in 2015, before it achieved Michelin Star fame. But, I never had a chance to taste Hawker Chan's food again since then.
Hawker Chan was already popular and had long queues even before it became a Michelin Star stall - Chinatown folks like the soya sauce chicken's tenderness and savoury sweet flavours as well as its very competitive price. It was among the cheapest, if not the cheapest soya sauce chicken in Chinatown then.
Now, add in throngs of tourists following the Michelin Guide, the queue had became longer than I am willing to wait. Today, I decided to queue for it, joined by buddies Milton and Jenny. (Hawker Chan has several restaurants now but I prefer the feel of eating at the original hawker stall where the Hawker Chan legend started.)
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Besides the soya sauce chicken hanging in the window, Hawker Chan's unctuous looking char siew caught my eye. It just made me more determined to stay in the queue 😄
All these loot for S$17 - Hawker Chan stall is still very competitively priced, despite its Michelin Star status. Thanks Jenny for the treat 😊 (The queue was orderly and was cleared efficiently. We waited about 30 minutes for our food, which I feel is a reasonable wait.)
The food was served in Earth harming Styrofoam plates with disposable chopsticks and plastic spoons. Just be careful of the light Styrofoam plates taking off like a kite and flipping onto your clothes with all the grease and sauces.
We shared half a bird which was well browned with dark soya sauce poaching stock. The skin was smooth, though not slippery. Jellied visceral fat between the meat and skin gave the chunks of chicken a juicy bite.
Every part of the chicken - leg, drumstick, breast - was tender and moist. Flavours mainly from sauces in the poaching stock were savoury sweet, leaning on the savoury side and rather flat. There was very little natural chicken sweetness, if any.
I asked for the fatty cut of char siew. The roast meat was encased with a gleaming dark brown and black coat of caramelised sugar.
With the higher fat ratio which we like, the char siew was tender and juicy inside. Outside, it was firmer.
Flavour was sweet savoury, mainly sweet, from the caramelised sugar and hoisin type sauce blend outside. There wasn't much, if any, natural porcine sweetness.
Three of us, we shared 2 plates of 斋面 or "kosong" noodles in
The generic noodles were the light kind. They were cooked to soft al dente with a subtle spring. The sauce was sweet savoury with the chili sauce adding another savoury layer and a bit of spicy heat.
👉 There are over a dozen soya sauce chicken stalls in and around the Chinatown Complex. Everyone, especially Chinatown folks, have their own preference and therefore have their own personal favourites. My guess is that for a tourist who is going to taste just one soya sauce chicken while in Singapore, Hawker Chan's rendition can offer a satisfying experience for most visitors.
Address: Blk 335, Smith Street #02-126 (Red Zone), Chinatown Food Complex, Singapore 050335
GPS: 1.282705, 103.842889
Hours: 10:30am to 7:00pm (Monday to Friday) | 8:30am to 7:00pm (weekend and public holiday) | (Closed on Wednesday)
Non Halal
Date visited: 19 July 2019
Date: 25 Apr 2015. The sprawling Chinatown Food Complex is one of my favourite hawker centres in Singapore because it has a huge variety of stalls, many still run by pioneer hawkers selling heritage food. As a Cantonese Ah Seng, I like it that Chinatown Food Complex has many Cantonese comfort foods that are seldom found in other hawker centres.
新加坡新币两块钱就可以吃到米其林星美食. 香港油雞飯麵. 档口位于新加坡唐人街美食中心. 这是世界最值得吃的米其林星美食. 到新加坡这可是非食不可.
There are several soya sauce chicken (and also steamed carp head) stalls here; Cantonese staples that are rarely seen outside of Chinatown Food Complex.
Soya sauce chicken 醬油雞 is a Cantonese comfort food often cooked and eaten at home. Outside of Chinatown Food Complex, most chicken rice stalls serve either white poached or boiled chicken, deep fried chicken, and occasionally roasted chicken. Soya sauce chicken is rarely seen.
Circling the huge food complex and tasting for a few days, I noted that Liao Fan Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle stall has the longest queue for soya sauce chicken.
The queue is always there, just long or longer.
Soya sauce chicken has a special place in my heart because it was one of the dishes students often cooked at home during our undergrad days in Canada. From our Hong Kong school mates, we picked up the technique and recipe to poach fresh chicken in soya sauce with a blend of herbs, dried orange peel etc. It's actually not too difficult to get good results once we mastered the poaching technique and made the sauce correctly.
We ate a lot of chicken as poor undergrads because we could get a bird for under CDN$1 each at the supermarket in the 1980s.
Mr Chan, the stall owner hails fromHong Kong Ipoh, Malaysia.
He was always so busy the whole time, I didn't have any chance to chat with him at all. Mr Chan is friendly and I am grateful that he didn't mind me snapping away while he worked ;-p
Half a bird for SGD7. (SGD14 for a whole bird.)
The skin and the tender, juicy darker flesh were so smooth that we had to be careful about accidentally letting the meat and skin slip down the throat.
Seriously.
No eating and talking when eating this.
Most of the robustly savoury flavour was on the soft skin and the splash of sauce. The tender flesh though was a little gentler in flavour.
The noodles were generic, cooked soft al dente. The blend of soy sauce and oil was mainly savoury. The dollop of chili sauce was loaded with savoury ground dried shrimps (hae bee).
Next time, I shall eat the soya sauce chicken with plain white rice instead of this noodles, to moderate the robust savouriness.
I didn't take a picture of the small disposable plastic bowl of clear soup but it was good. It was slightly herbal and had that flavour from dried bak choy 菜干, an ingredient Cantonese often use in soups at home. I like it.
For SGD5 we also got a generous serving of char siew and siew yok.
The char siew was well caramelised outside and charred at the edges. Robustly savoury, sweet and gummy outside with not much fat inside, so it's less moist and less tender overall.
Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodle is a good place to taste this Cantonese classic and it's a nice bonus that it is also very competitively priced.
★ Happy to hear the news that Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken is awarded a Michelin Star in the inaugural Singapore Michelin Guide 2016. Congratulations to Mr Chan and thanks for the great food. Your hard work is well appreciated ☻
Restaurant name: Liao Fan Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle 香港油雞飯麵
Address: Blk 335, Smith Street #02-126, Chinatown Food Complex, Singapore 050335
Map: http://bit.ly/HKSoyaSauceChicken
GPS: 1.282705, 103.842889
Hours: 10:30am to 7:00pm (Monday to Friday) | 8:30am to 7:00pm (weekend and public holiday) | (Closed on Wednesday)
Non Halal
Date visited: 25 Apr 2015
^ click for details
Return to Johor Kaki homepage.
新加坡新币两块钱就可以吃到米其林星美食. 香港油雞飯麵. 档口位于新加坡唐人街美食中心. 这是世界最值得吃的米其林星美食. 到新加坡这可是非食不可.
There are several soya sauce chicken (and also steamed carp head) stalls here; Cantonese staples that are rarely seen outside of Chinatown Food Complex.
Soya sauce chicken 醬油雞 is a Cantonese comfort food often cooked and eaten at home. Outside of Chinatown Food Complex, most chicken rice stalls serve either white poached or boiled chicken, deep fried chicken, and occasionally roasted chicken. Soya sauce chicken is rarely seen.
Circling the huge food complex and tasting for a few days, I noted that Liao Fan Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle stall has the longest queue for soya sauce chicken.
The queue is always there, just long or longer.
Soya sauce chicken has a special place in my heart because it was one of the dishes students often cooked at home during our undergrad days in Canada. From our Hong Kong school mates, we picked up the technique and recipe to poach fresh chicken in soya sauce with a blend of herbs, dried orange peel etc. It's actually not too difficult to get good results once we mastered the poaching technique and made the sauce correctly.
We ate a lot of chicken as poor undergrads because we could get a bird for under CDN$1 each at the supermarket in the 1980s.
Mr Chan, the stall owner hails from
He was always so busy the whole time, I didn't have any chance to chat with him at all. Mr Chan is friendly and I am grateful that he didn't mind me snapping away while he worked ;-p
Half a bird for SGD7. (SGD14 for a whole bird.)
The skin and the tender, juicy darker flesh were so smooth that we had to be careful about accidentally letting the meat and skin slip down the throat.
Seriously.
No eating and talking when eating this.
Most of the robustly savoury flavour was on the soft skin and the splash of sauce. The tender flesh though was a little gentler in flavour.
The noodles were generic, cooked soft al dente. The blend of soy sauce and oil was mainly savoury. The dollop of chili sauce was loaded with savoury ground dried shrimps (hae bee).
Next time, I shall eat the soya sauce chicken with plain white rice instead of this noodles, to moderate the robust savouriness.
I didn't take a picture of the small disposable plastic bowl of clear soup but it was good. It was slightly herbal and had that flavour from dried bak choy 菜干, an ingredient Cantonese often use in soups at home. I like it.
For SGD5 we also got a generous serving of char siew and siew yok.
The char siew was well caramelised outside and charred at the edges. Robustly savoury, sweet and gummy outside with not much fat inside, so it's less moist and less tender overall.
Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodle is a good place to taste this Cantonese classic and it's a nice bonus that it is also very competitively priced.
★ Happy to hear the news that Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken is awarded a Michelin Star in the inaugural Singapore Michelin Guide 2016. Congratulations to Mr Chan and thanks for the great food. Your hard work is well appreciated ☻
Restaurant name: Liao Fan Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle 香港油雞飯麵
Address: Blk 335, Smith Street #02-126, Chinatown Food Complex, Singapore 050335
Map: http://bit.ly/HKSoyaSauceChicken
GPS: 1.282705, 103.842889
Hours: 10:30am to 7:00pm (Monday to Friday) | 8:30am to 7:00pm (weekend and public holiday) | (Closed on Wednesday)
Non Halal
Date visited: 25 Apr 2015
^ click for details
Return to Johor Kaki homepage.
He just won a Michelin star! Did you see the Interviews!?
ReplyDeleteThe lines were long before, but they're about to get much longer!
Yes i did :-D Mr Chan was so humble and gracious about his well deserved win.
Deletethis place is great! congratulations!
ReplyDeleteYes it definitely is. Si yau kai!! Humble comfort food a Michelin Star! So happy and grateful for Mr Chan.
DeleteHe was just interviewed over the news and I like what he said, "we,are doing it as a giving(奉献)to the diners, it is not about making big mobey"
ReplyDeleteyes Mr Chan is a humble and sincere person
DeleteSo many chickens! Yummy looking.
ReplyDeleteI hope to be able to try it one day.
Mr Chan sells 150 chicken a day before the Michelin Star :-D
DeleteThe chicken meat looks tender and delicious. Will ask my Sis at Singapore to try it out.
ReplyDeleteIt's really good :-D Do try it if you are in Singapore.
DeleteOh!! I went to this place before too, my auntie brought me here! It's really good indeed!
ReplyDeleteOMG~ I miss Hong Kong foods especially their Wan Tan Mee and tong shui.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait for my HK trip soon.
do give this a try when you come to Singapore :-D we have a Chinatown food centre with many old style Cantonese dishes.
DeleteAh, I remember coming here to eat 1.5 years ago when I was in Singapore. The queue was not this long back then. Good for him.
ReplyDeleteyeah lor. very happy for him. 30 years of hard work. I heard now a French group and another Indonesian group has proposed franchise rights with big sums.
DeleteSoya sauce chicken, one of my favorite comfort dishes as well, craving for it now :(
ReplyDeleteWow.. this looks really good.. would love a taste of it... Thanks for the recommendation
ReplyDeleteI like chicken rice so much ~ What a funny things i heard from public is hope the stall not so famous so that no need to line up everytime..haha
ReplyDeleteLOL yeah now I won't have much chance to taste it anymore.
DeleteThe price is cheap for the whole bird. This round I will go and try when I go to Singapore.
ReplyDeleteDrooling.. Looks so tempting and feels like eating.... I wanna try this
ReplyDeleteLocal delicacies are always a treat to eat. Yummylicious!
ReplyDeleteReading your post is making me hungry! The juiciness of the sauce and meat is so drooling!!
ReplyDeleteYour reaction is making me hungry LOL :-D
Deletelook so yummy and delicious. too bad they are serving on a Polystyrene plate. that is a minus point for me.
ReplyDeleteYeah, would have been perfect if they use a healthier and environment friendly option. But, for a small stall with such sales volume, there might not be much choice.
Deletewow the upclose shot of that duck is really food porn level man
ReplyDeleteThank you :-D it's chicken Arisa :-D
DeleteFood everywhere! Now i feel hungry. haha. great suggestions there
ReplyDeleteI wonder if I can get this in Hong Kong! I'll be going there soon!
ReplyDeleteMr Chan from Ipoh, that explains why the chicken is World Class (tm)
ReplyDeleteHi, the stall number is 02-126 not 166
ReplyDeleteThank you for pointing out. I've amended it. Appreciate much.
DeleteBefore Mr.Chan was awarded with a MICHELIN STAR I always packed home half a chicken with 1 pack of rice, 1 pack of noodles and a pack of hor fun once every week. But now the Q starts from his stall and end near to the escallator....no chance for me to taste it again.He is back to his home town now and the Q will starts again tomorrow
ReplyDeleteyes, i also no chance to taste Mr Chan's chicken now ;-(
Delete