Xiang Jiang serve a popular Hong Kong style wanton noodle, HK style soya sauce chicken, and huge prawn dumplings (sui kow). It's one of the most popular stalls at Alexandra Village (judging by the constant queue), touted by influencers as the best soya sauce chicken in Singapore, awarded the Michelin Plate, owned by ex-Raffles Hotel chef and all.
Stalking Alexandra Village Food Centre at 8am on a Weds morning, most of the stalls were still closed. Xiang Jiang Soya Sauce Chicken was the only stall that sported any sort of queue at this time of the morning here.
The soya sauce chicken in the window looked promising. So, I joined the queue. The line moved slightly slowly - it was some 20 minutes before it was my turn to order.
Everything here for $7. I upsized the chicken and added two sui kow.
Xiang Jiang serve only HK style soya sauce chicken with their wanton mee. No char siew (roast pork).
The brownish colour soya sauce chicken came chopped in large chunks (I like) and slathered with a dark brown sauce. There was a nice soya sauce aroma when I collected my chicken and wanton mee.
The brown skin and sauce have a nice soya sauce savouriness and subtle Chinese 5-spice flavour. The skin was soft and smooth, while the meat was tender and moist.
There wasn't much infusion of sauce and spice flavours into the tender meat, hence it tasted a little bland inside. I didn't detect much, if any, natural chicky sweetness.
The huge mound of noodle came with the brown sauce and a couple of stalks of kai lan vegetables.
I love those tender-soft crunchy blanched kai lan.
There's hae bee hiam sambal chili with dried shrimp blended with chili, etc. Thank goodness for sambal chili to complement the savoury brown sauce.
The egg noodles were slender and done springy-crunchy as per Hong Kong style. The sauce was savoury and with the sambal chili - more layers of savouriness, some umami and spicy heat.
I got a couple of prawn dumplings (80 cents each) which came in a bowl of savoury sweet soup with pronounced umami flavour from tee poh - the kind of soup you get at good HK wanton mee places. Excellent.
I like Xiang Jiang's sui kow. The freshly made dumplings were large, filled somewhat loosely with minced pork, chopped mushroom, water chestnut, wood fungus, tiny shrimp etc. The texture was mostly soft tender with bits and pieces of wood fungus providing some crunch.
The best soya sauce chicken in Singapore?
Compared to One Michelin Star Hawker Chan, and soya sauce chicken stalwarts Chiew Kee & Chew Kee, I feel Xiang Jiang has the edge in quality of egg noodles used. In terms of the braising sauce, I put Xiang Jiang between Hawker Chan and Chew Kee & Chiew Kee - with Hawker Chan having the edge in soya sauce flavour. For texture of chicken, I also prefer Hawker Chan. (For Hawker Chan, I am referring only to the Chinatown Complex stall #02-126 where the man himself, sometimes show up.)
Next time, I shall go for their sui kow and noodles in soup since these are my favourite things at Xiang Jiang.
Written by Tony Boey on 20 Apr 2021
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