Hey Hive!
We're back with more of our hawker adventures! It's been a while but one of the things we do on dates is trying out different stalls in different hawker centers to find which are our favourites!
This was a few months back when we ventured to the East side of Singapore to visit my brother and his family. But we stopped by this small and old shopping mall for some light lunch before heading over there for dinner.
Source: Straits Times
I recently learned that this building is one of the Singapore's few remaining strata malls, which is a shopping complex where the individual shops, are owned separately by different people rather than being owned by a single entity like a properly developer such as Capitaland. Those malls tend to be newer and fancier but with the same common layout as their other properties. I guess there are pros and cons to both types of malls.
Katong Shopping Center first opened in 1973 and while many other strata malls have since either been bought over by bigger companies or shut down, this mall has stood the test of time.
I think this is partly due to the immense popularity of certain stalls in this building. There are a few famous hidden gems in this shopping center that only locals might know.
But we were here for lunch so we headed to the food court in the basement floor of the mall, and I was quite surprised by how modern the food court looked!
While the signboard looked old, the interior was quite modern, just like any other kopitiam or food court you'd see in newer housing estates.
There were quite a few stalls and long tables and benches. It was past peak lunch time so there was plenty of space but I can see this place becoming quite crowded during peak hours.
This Chicken Rice stall called Katong Delicious Chicken Rice is apparently very popular. I've never heard of it before, but Sean also said he tried it and it was pretty good so I intrigued.
Here's the menu, and I thought $7.70 was pretty expensive for a set but I was hoping the portion would make it fairly reasonable.
We could see the many chickens they prepared hanging in the stall, along with all the other fresh ingredients they use.
While there wasn't a line, the screen in front of the stall displayed a full board of queue numbers, which was surprising since it was well past 2pm. I guess that just goes to show how popular this stall is.
Thankfully we weren't super hungry at the time so we decided to share one set of Roasted Chicken Rice. The receipt had our queue number and we patiently waited for our order to be ready.
Since a lot of the ingredients were already there, all they had to do was chop the chicken and plate the ingredients so it didn't take long until our order was ready!
I thought the set was just the chicken, rice and a bowl of soup but it also came with a side of pickled vegetables! The soup was also not just regular chicken rice soup (or chicken broth) but a light cabbage soup.
It looked really good! The rice was definitely a lot yellower than I imagined or seen before but I was curious to try it. Just inhaling the rich aroma of the chicken rice was making me salivate.
The chicken was actually very nice! It was moist, tender and had crispy garlic bits to give it that extra crunch. The rice was also very flavourful and not overly oily. The pickled vegetables weren't too sour which was to my liking, and the soup was also quite light and while I would've liked a bit more seasoning it provided a nice palate cleanser. Overall, the entire set was very tasty indeed!
The only question is would I pay almost 8 bucks for this and honestly I don't think I would. It might be overpriced because of rising rental costs and inflation but I'm not sure if the taste itself is worth that much. Sean agreed as well, and while we both like Chicken Rice a lot, we have yet to find our absolute favourite stall for Chicken Rice.
If you have any recommendations, let us know!
Thanks for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
