Tian Tian Chicken Rice, Maxwell Food Centre, Singapore

Back in November last year, I finally got the chance to try the famous Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice from Singapore. The stall is located in Maxwell Food Centre and is pretty easy to locate once you're inside the hawker centre. Look for the stall with the longest queue!

Fortunately for us, when we arrived, the queue was not too bad and they have an efficient system - choose from the menu on the wall, place your order and pay, get a receipt and wait in the queue for your chicken rice. I think we got ours in about 10 minutes. Just before we left, we looked again and the queue was out the door and all the way outside! Talk about good timing.

For us, it is definitely worth the queue as it is the best Hainanese chicken rice we've eaten in Singapore. A medium-sized chicken rice will cost you S$5. The steamed chicken (we got breast) was super smooth and tender. The piece de resistance is the rice itself - it was amazingly fragrant and delicious that we just want to keep eating it. Even the chilli dipping sauce was lovely and fragrant, slightly tangy and with a spicy kick to it. An extremely good plate of chicken rice!

Even Anthony Bourdain agrees!

We also decided to try Ah Tai Hainanese Chicken Rice, a few stalls down from Tian Tian. We read that Ah Tai's chef used to work for Tian Tian. No queue here. We got the chicken rice set, which comes with rice, chicken, pak choi with oyster sauce and soup. I can't remember the price exactly but it was cheaper than Tian Tian's.

As you can see, the portion size is also much bigger. However, we do find Tian Tian's chicken rice to be far superior in taste (both rice and chicken). Nevertheless, it's pretty decent. If I'm not mistaken, there are at least 2-3 other stalls in Maxwell Food Centre selling Hainanese chicken rice too. 

We were seated near this stall (Marina South Delicious Food - Stall 35) and noticed that they had Fried Hokkien Prawn Noodle. I've always wanted to try this, so we ordered a small portion at $4. Unlike the KL version, the Singapore-style Hokkien prawn noodle is cooked using two types of noodles (yellow noodles and thick bee hoon), usually steeped in aromatic stock made of pork bones and prawn heads, along with egg, prawns and squid. It is served with sambal chilli and lime on the side for extra zing. We enjoyed this and found it to be very flavorful. Definitely worth trying!

On the way to Maxwell Good Centre, we snapped some photos of the Red Dot Deign Museum.

Tian Tian Chicken Rice is open from Tuesday to Sundays (10am to 8pm, or when chicken is sold out). Closed on Mondays.

Location: Maxwell Food Centre,1 Kadayanallur St, Singapore 069184.

Nearest MRT: Tanjong Pagar.

GPS Coordinates: 1.280156, 103.844987



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