Hello and what's up Steemians!

I would just like to share the experience of having tried Hainanese Chicken Rice in non other than the Hawker experience in Singapore.

Hainanese Chicken Rice

To those who does not know, Hainanese Chicken is a slow cooked chicken over boiling water to achieve maximum tenderness. Where the fragrant rice is simply steamed rice enhanced with the chicken stock and maybe a few more seasoning to get that "chickeny" kick with each mouthful.

This journey took us to Maxwell Food Centre, home to the Michelin Starred "Tian-Tian" Hainanese Chicken rice and a lot more Hawker stalls. And as soon as we spotted "Tian-Tian" at around 11AM, we have already spotted the long queue that we have to cross in order to try the famed dish.

Hate long queues? Well, I do, but worry not, because the line moves very fast as they have created a simple system that allows for them to serve their customers very efficiently. How simple? Well, the queue is pretty much the ordering and passing their orders to the one prepping the dish. They direct you to the next window which serves the dish fairly quickly.

Waiting time really does not take long and if you are eager to try it out, then it should not take you a few minutes to be able to devour this amazing creation.

And while "Tian-Tian" has been awarded the Michelin, it did not stop other Hainanese stalls from trying to steal the fame. "Ah-Tai", another famed Hainanese chicken spot is right around the corner. And we just had to try both to compare since we are already here.

The tray on the left is the one that came from the Michelin starred "Tian-Tian" while the tray on the right was from "Ah-Tai".

Fragrance and Taste

What we noticed on their difference was simply the fragrance.

Tian-Tian

"Tian-Tian" Hainanese chicken opened our eyes with the first bite introducing the chicken fragrance that accompanied every bite. The chicken flavor simply exploded in your mouth spoon after spoon. The chicken was as tender as ever, it was cooked perfectly on the bone. It came with sliced cucumber to introduce more freshness to the dish and while the sweet soy sauce was already on the plate, adding it on every bite proves to introduce another mix of flavors that significantly improved the next spoonful.

Ah-Tai

"Ah-Tai" Hainanese chicken, on the other hand, was served off the bone. The expected flavors and the full-on chicken experience was there minus the fragrance bomb that was observed in the starred dish. While this dish was served along with sliced cucumbers for what I believe would be for the same reason of freshness, their sweet soy and chili sauce was served on the side which gives their customers more option on modifying their hainanese chicken experience.

Personally I preferred the "Tian-Tian" version over the "Ah-Tai" version, not because of it's Michelin Star rating, but because I enjoyed the chicken flavor-bomb that accompanies each spoonful. Despite having the bone there, I believe it would have been better if it was already served off it. But for efficiency sake, I fully understand if this is the reason why they left it there in the first place - if only I took a picture of the queue. Whether of not I saw this as a full-on Michelin star experience, I would not be able to compare as this was my first time devouring a starred food served by a starred hawker stall. But nonetheless, the flavor deserved the rating.

Price

And you know what? Both of these dishes did not cost us $5 SGD. So if you wanted to try a Michelin rated dish for cheap, this should be one of the many places that you should be going to in Singapore.

So that's pretty much my very first experience in trying a Michelin starred dish and it did not fail. This was definitely an amazing experience for us and would love to try more. So you know what? Following this, I should be able to hit you up another Singapore experience soon.