As far as I could remember, I grew up eating Heng Ji Chicken Rice. It was either this, or Tiong Shian Porridge whenever my family goes to Chinatown.

If you are on my Facebook, you would have known that I was craving for Heng Ji Chicken Rice in the middle of the night some time back. Haha!

It has been a long time since we last had Heng Ji and yesterday, my Dad suggested having our dinner there!

Hooray!

Hey, this post is about Heng Ji, right? So why is it titled "Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodles"? (HKSSC for short)

As the story goes, while making our way towards Heng Ji, we walked past HKSSC and were instantly mesmerized by the gleaming Soya Sauce chickens hanging from the hooks! This stall is four stalls away from Heng Ji and we wonder why have we not seen it before?

Although we were already queuing for Heng Ji (see first photo), we are still contemplating which stall to patronise. In visual terms, the Soya Sauce chickens certainly looks more tantalising than their pale looking cousins. For the uninitiated, Heng Ji sells White Steamed chickens while HKSSC sells Soya Sauce chickens.

After decades of eating Heng Ji, we finally decided it's time to jump ship!

Soya Sauce Chicken Half Chicken SGD 7, Whole Chicken SGD 14
The chicken is very smooth and tender with not much fats under the skin while the marinade tasted sweet with light fragrances of herbs and spices like Dang Gui (Chinese Angelica) and Star Anise. The meat detaches from the bones very easily so there is no struggle with the plastic cutlery.

We all loved this Soya Sauce Chicken to bits! Absolutely succulent!

Score:  

Char Siew
I don't usually eat Char Siew as most of them around are either too lean, too fat or not properly roasted (lack of fire control). My interest can only be arouse by Cantonese-styled Char Siew where it's slightly charred around the edges and with perfect lean meat and fat ratio. To me, the Char Siew is not charred enough but the sauce on it makes up for it.

Over here at HKSSC, the Char Siew were chopped in thick chunks which allows us to chew on the texture and truly savour the flavors within unlike the paper-thin slices found elsewhere.

Score:  

Unlike Heng Ji, HKSSC serves plain white rice instead of the oily chicken rice.

When I had my meals at such Siu Mei (烧味) stalls, I do not like my rice drenched with the black starchy sauce. Instead, I preferred to have dark Soy Sauce (豉油). However, they used neither here. Our rice were drenched with something that I guessed is their own special concoction which is really nice on the rice. I am guessing it's the leftover sauce from the braised chickens.

Do you know what that sauce is and what those tiny bits are? (refer to the pictures above and below)

I thought Mum's noodles look rather dry because I could hardly see any sauce on her plate. After taking a bite, however, I found the noodles to be delightfully chewy and whatever little sauce there is had already been infused into it, making every mouhtful full of flavors!

Towards the end of our meal, I suddenly realize that there was no cucumber slices underneath the chicken nor were we given a bowl of soup. No wonder there's a nagging feeling telling me that something is not quite right!

I found out only later that HKSSC do not give free soup but Dumpling Soup is available at SGD 3 and SGD 5.

Although there are less than ten customers in front of me, I had to queue for almost twenty minutes just to place my order. The reason for the slow moving queue was because the man who chops the chickens cooks the noodles as well.

There is one lady in charge of taking orders and payment while there are three more staffs busy at the back of the stall so why does he have to multi-task? I believe he is passionate about the food  he serves and preparing them himself enables him to have total control over the consistency of his food standards and delivering only the best to his customers.

Flickr here.