Hotplate chicken rice ($5)!
Hawker hotplate chicken rice $5 — sizzling cast-iron plate with grilled chicken, fragrant rice, fried egg and dark sauce. Comfort lunch.
Thursday lockdown takeaway lunch — hawker stop for hotplate chicken rice at $5. The sizzling-plate format doesn’t quite work as takeaway (no sizzle by the time you get home), but the components are still satisfying.
We ordered:
- Hotplate chicken rice — $5
Hotplate chicken rice is one of those Singapore-Chinese hawker dishes that lives at the intersection of comfort food and theatre. At the stall it arrives at the table still hissing — chicken pieces, a runny egg cracked over the top, dark sweet-soy sauce pooled around the rice, all sizzling on a cast-iron hot plate. The takeaway version misses the sizzle but keeps the flavour.
The chicken was the headliner. Sliced chicken thigh, marinated in dark soy, ginger and garlic, grilled over high heat until the edges caramelised and the skin went crispy. The slight char on the chicken edges is the giveaway of a hot-plate or grill cook rather than a steamed-and-sauced one.
Rice was the standard fragrant chicken rice base — short-grain rice cooked with chicken stock, ginger, garlic and a touch of pandan. The kind of rice that goes well with anything but particularly with the sweet-soy chicken on top.
Egg was a sunny-side-style addition, broken across the top of the chicken and rice. By the time the takeaway box reached us, the yolk had set slightly but still had some give when broken with the spoon.
Dark soy sauce was ladled around the rice — the kind that’s slightly thickened with sugar so it clings to each grain rather than pooling at the bottom of the plate.
Side of pickled green chillies and a small dish of garlic chilli.
$5 for the hotplate format takeaway is honest hawker pricing.
Overall: 4.3 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Solid hotplate chicken rice takeaway — would re-order.
