A lot of people are crazy over ‘Hainanese Chicken Rice’ in Singapore so I did a search online where to try this and found a number of foodie write ups about this hawker stall at Maxwell Food Centre, just beside Ann Siang Hill where we dropped by.
TV Chef personalities, Anthony Bourdain and Gordon Ramsay have been in this stall, on different occasions with the latter just a few weeks before I visited during a Hawker vs Ramsay Challenge. Anthony Bourdain on the other hand said that the chicken rice here alone was good enough to eat.
So as you can see, there is much hype about this hawker and this is what we saw when we arrived:
Queues at Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice
Website: Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice
Are you kidding me? Long queues?! Is this for real? So I quickly took my point-and-click camera out to document this hawker phenomenon. I mean, who are these people? Where do they come from? I can see that there is a good mixture of tourists and locals vying for this sought after Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice. Some locals order them take away.
We did not waste time and quickly fell in line.
Do take note that there are 2 queues here. A queue to order and pay and another queue to collect the food. At this point I am really hungry as it is way past the lunch hour. I could lick anything that comes near me.
Hainanese Steamed Chicken Rice
Finally, our the food is here! Two Hainanese Chicken Rice (it comes with a soup) for SisterJ and moi and a plate of Beansprouts with Cuttlefish as our side dish. We initially ordered the Vegetable with Oyster Sauce as our side dish but they ran out of this.
My verdict: The Hainanese Chicken Rice was quite good but I can’t say it’s the best because then I must have compared it to several others right, which I have not because I do not eat a lot of this dish. Well, I mean there was no earth shattering explosion of the senses here to be honest. So I asked SisterJ her opinion. She may not be an expert of Hainanese Chicken Rice because she prefers the Roasted Chicken Rice but she can better gauge this than moi. She said it is quite good. She will not say it is the best as well, after all I know my sister, she is not into unnecessary superlatives.
I guess everyone has their own favourite Hainanese Chicken Rice hawker in Singapore, but the most important question would be: Will I want to come back here or go to another Tian Tian Chicken Rice hawker stall? I think YES. So I am giving this hawker stall a 4.2 stars out of 5.
This I can honestly say though that this is the only hawker stall at Maxwell that has queues. Long queues. Never ending queues. The owners must be cashing in a lot of money from this business! I would have thought that the queues will stop at some point but for the 45 minutes we were there the queues just kept going strong. Can you imagine during peak lunch and dinner hours? Hint: Franchise.
Below are a few more pictures of Maxwell Food Centre:
Travel Period: July 2013
Destination: Singapore Central, Singapore
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