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!
If you've never patronised a hawker center before, they are typically non-air conditioned buildings that house all kinds of food stalls specialising in one or two signature dishes. They're ubiquitous here in Singapore and Malaysia and are known for delicious and affordable food - the perfect combination! They're definitely where you can find the best food in Singapore and is our go-to place for food!
Source: TODAYonline
Recently, we found ourselves on the West part of Singapore after a medical appointment and decided we'd check out another hawker centre we haven't been.
It's called Margaret Drive Hawker Centre and I think Sean has been here before but I haven't. He said it was newly refurbished and had quite a few famous stalls. It's a little out of the way though it's next to a train station so we did have to walk a little in the hot sun unfortunately.
The hawker centre has 2 floors, with different stalls on each floor and a good number of tables and seats. The second floor was more deserted though the place was nicely furnished with big overhead fans and was really clean too.
The hawker centre was fairly empty when we went by since it was still early in the day and not lunch time yet.
Many of the stalls were closed too, including the one we really wanted to try and the whole reason why we came here. Sean has been raving about this Hakka Thunder Tea stall and since it was a new dish from a new cuisine I really wanted to try it. But alas, I guess it just wasn't meant to be.
We decided to go look for another stall to try here in the meantime and found this apparently famous chicken rice stall.
I've never heard of this chicken rice stall before but it has quite a history. Sin Kee Chicken Rice was established in 1971 by Mr. Leong Fook Wing at the former Margaret Drive Food Centre which looked like this back in the 1960s:
Source: rememberinghdbestates
After Mr. Leong's passing in 2008, his sons inherited the family business and each went on to open their own version of the original stall in different locations. The brothers seemed to have different variations of the stall name but they use the same recipe so I'm not sure if they're competing rival stalls or technically the same stall chain. One of them was awarded with a Michelin Bib Gourmand and was featured in the Michelin Guide Singapore though!
Source: danielfooddiary
Either way, we were here and we were hungry. They had both rice and noodles so we decided to try one each. This is the big chicken rice that came with stir-fried vegetables (kailan) and a hard boiled egg.
We ordered roast chicken since both of us like it better than the classic steamed chicken. The rice was very fragrant and not too oily. The chicken was nice and tender and juicy. It was really delicious and I can see why it's famous. It really tasted like classic chicken rice.
Here are the noodles with barbecued pork or char siew which also comes with a side of green vegetables.
The noodles were nice and smooth with a very slight chewy texture. It was almost like my favourite noodles but not quite. The char siew was nice and tender as well, with a good char on them and the seasoning was not too sweet.
Overall, both dishes were really good but they were hardly enough to satisfy us since the portions were a little small. Since it was a hot day we decided to get dessert as well to cool down.
We got dessert from the drinks stall where they had different shaved ice and jelly desserts. This was grass jelly with nata de coco.
Actually the ice wasn't shaved ice like I thought it was going to be, but it came in pretty big pieces. I guess that meant more jelly but it wasn't as cold as I would have liked. It was still good though and wasn't like the other dessert with lots of sugar syrup so it was healthier.
After we were done it was lunch time and when we downstairs to the first floor we were surprised to see the place was packed!
The chicken rice stall even had a pretty long line of people queuing to buy it.
I was thankful we came by earlier so we could avoid the crowds. I guess even though this hawker center isn't directly connected to the train station the food is good enough that people are willing to brave the heat to walk here.
We were just leaving when we saw this adorable doggo on the way out too! So we left in the same direction and got to see it walk away.
All in all, this was a nice meal at a new place. It was unfortunate that the stall we wanted to patronise was closed but we still got to try a Michelin recognised stall and had a delicious meal.
Thanks for reading!
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