Tori-Q for dinner ($16.40)!

Monday dinner with BB — Tori-Q chicken set at $16.40. The reliable Japanese food-court yakitori-style chicken kiosk that’s been a default cheap-Japanese-fix in Singapore food courts since the 90s.

We ordered:

• Tori-Q chicken set — $16.40 (combined order for two)

The Tori-Q formula is simple and hasn’t changed in years: charcoal-style grilled boneless chicken thigh, brushed with their signature sweet-soy tare sauce, sliced into bite-sized strips and served over rice with miso soup and a small bowl of salad.

The chicken is the whole show. Boneless thigh with the skin on, grilled until the skin gets crispy brown edges and the fat renders into the meat. The tare sauce is the family glaze — sweet, soy-heavy, slightly thick from the reduction, brushed on throughout the grill so it builds up layered caramelisation. Slices show a faint smoke ring.

Each set comes with fluffy short-grain rice (Japanese-style sticky-but-distinct grains), a few cabbage shreds doused in sesame dressing, and a tiny bowl of miso soup with tofu cubes and wakame. The proportions are tight but everything earns its slot.

$16.40 for two sets at Tori-Q is roughly $8 per set, which is the standard food-court Japanese pricing. Tori-Q has resisted the urge to keep raising prices like every other chain, and the food court continues to be the right price point for a quick Japanese dinner.

The Monday dinner slot is the right venue for Tori-Q. After the day’s home lunch and afternoon work, the food court chicken set is the kind of meal that requires zero cognitive effort to order, eat, and finish. The food court eating experience at this point in phase 2 has settled — safe distancing markers, contact tracing, mask-up between bites.

Tori-Q has been one of the reliable rotation defaults across the lockdown era. Pre-pandemic, lockdown, phase 2 — the chain stayed steady through all of it.

Overall: 4.3 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Reliable Tori-Q dinner — would default to this any food court visit.

Original IG post