Har cheong gai rice bowl at a modern hawker ($6)!
Modern hawker har cheong gai (prawn paste chicken) rice bowl with sweet chilli sauce, onsen egg and shredded cucumber over rice. $6.
Comfort lunch repeat — har cheong gai rice bowl at $6. The modern hawker classic that I keep coming back to. 😋
What was in the kraft bowl ($6):
- A bed of fluffy white rice at the base.
- A pile of har cheong gai (prawn paste chicken) — golden battered chunks of chicken with that signature fermented shrimp paste fragrance, drizzled with sweet chilli sauce for the colour pop and extra punch.
- A half-poached onsen egg sitting at the side with its silky white envelope around the runny yolk.
- A bed of shredded cucumber underneath the chicken for the cool crunch.
This is the third (or fourth?) har cheong gai rice bowl post on the blog — and the formula keeps working. The combination of crispy fermented-shrimp-fragrance chicken + runny yolk + cucumber freshness + rice base hits the textural and flavour balance every time.
Break the yolk, mix it into the rice, then layer with the chicken + cucumber. The yolk turns the rice glossy, the chicken adds the umami funk + crunch, the cucumber resets the palate.
For $6, this is one of the consistently best-value bowls in modern hawker. Restaurant-tier flavour at hawker pricing.
Total: $6. Hawker pricing.
Overall: 4.5 / 5. Reliability confirmed across multiple visits. Chicken was the right level of crispy, prawn paste fragrance was unmistakable, onsen egg yolk was the right runny level. Always the same standard. 😍👍🏼
