Fried chicken rice ($6.30)!
Tanjong Pagar hawker Japanese-style fried chicken rice: karaage drizzled with spicy mentaiko mayo over rice, with shredded cabbage, tamago, pickles and miso soup. $6.30.
Lunch at Tanjong Pagar: fried chicken rice, $6.30! ๐
What was in the bowl:
- Japanese-style karaage: craggy boneless fried chicken chunks under a spicy mentaiko mayo zigzag, the orange-pink sauce pooling over the pieces
- Shredded cabbage: the raw cabbage-and-sprout tangle, dusted with sesame
- Tamago folds: the soft omelette tucked under the chicken
- Pickled radish + carrot: the bright side garnish
- Rice underneath, with miso soup and chilli sauce on the side
Karaage is the Japanese fried chicken technique: thigh meat marinated in soy, ginger and garlic, dredged in potato starch and fried so the crust stays light and shatter-crisp rather than thick and bready. Laid over rice with the sides, it becomes a karaage don, the bento-in-a-bowl format that hawker Japanese stalls do well.
The mentaiko mayo is the move that lifts this above a plain fried chicken plate: spicy cured pollock roe whipped into Japanese mayo, its salty-creamy punch cutting the fried richness. The shredded cabbage and pickles are the freshness counterweights, the same logic as a tonkatsu set.
The format works because every element has a job: crisp chicken, creamy sauce, raw crunch, soft egg, miso to wash it down. Nothing is filler.
At $6.30 for a Japanese-style karaage don with miso soup in Tanjong Pagar, this is solid hawker value against the $12-$15 mall versions.
Overall: 4.2 / 5. ๐๐๐ผ The mentaiko mayo over crisp karaage was the standout. Would re-order.
