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Sunday, April 3, 2022

Succulent Singaporean national dish, Chicken rice, and tofu in sweet and sour sauce at Nex


 
Chicken rice at Nex. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Chicken rice is the national dish of Singapore. The Chinese dish, inexpensive and sold at many hawker centres (now still called hawker centres but upgraded to the grand title of food courts).

On what looks like the ground floor, but is actually basement 2, where you walk out of the MRT underground train station with street level outside, of the large Nex Shopping Mall you find an indoor food court called Food Republic, not one restaurant but a series of independent businesses.

I was delighted by the chicken rice dish. A large portion of chicken, nice rice (I chose white rice, which is less tasty but less fattening than fried rice. On the side were two pieces of cucumber - I would have liked more. 

Soup and Spicy Sauce
Was there anything else they could do better? The chicken soup didn't really taste of chicken. (I dream of chicken soup from B & K in Hatch End, London.) The lack of flavour didn't matter as I used my chicken soup to pour over the rice to add some liquid to the meal. But we didn't finish our soup. We did finish every scrap of chicken and rice.

To be fair, I must admit that I did not attempt the spicy sauce, which you can see in the teeny white bowls.

Equally more-ish was the tofu in sweet and sour chili fleck sauce. I have never been a great fan of bland tofu. But the sauce was just wonderful. I would definitely go back for this. Oddly, the tofu was dearer than the chicken dish. The tofu was 7.50 dollars (and did for two people sharing), whilst the chicken rice was 4.50 Singapore dollars.

I finished with lemon tea from another stall, near the entrance. It was really lemony. All in all, a great experience. Highly recommended. I look forward to going back.

The chicken meal company's name was Guan Chee. Guan is a Chinese character, meaning gate keeper (the official in a city) or border pass. The symbol can also be romanized as Kuan or Kwan or Quan.
The name Chee also appears as Chia

Useful Websites
Singapore
Food Republic
23 Serangoon Central, #B2
Singapore 556083
Chinese names
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C4%81n

UK

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