Some of the best dishes I’ve had were among the simplest in terms of the list of ingredients used. When done well by the masters, these ‘simple dishes’ can be among the tastiest you ever had, and they highlight the flavor of the main ingredient. One of such dishes is a dish that is so popular in Singapore among the locals and visitors that it’s often considered as ‘the national dish of Singapore,’ the Hainanese chicken rice.

The Hainanese chicken rice is essentially boiled chicken served with rice steamed with chicken broth. It was originated from the Hainan province in China (thus the name), but it’s quite popular in Southeast Asian countries.

For me, this dish is one of those things that evoked childhood memories. I don’t remember much from my toddler days, but one thing I remember was having lunch at my aunt’s home and being served boiled chicken with chicken broth and steamed rice. Very simple dish, but it’s one that highlights the chicken flavor very well. It’s also meaningful for us as we heard stories from my aunt and my dad about having this dish for special occasions when they grew up, as their family was poor and couldn’t afford to buy chicken meat frequently.

During our short stop in Singapore, I wanted to try out the Hainanese chicken rice dish there. One of the stalls at the Maxwell Road Hawker Centre near Singapore Chinatown happened to be a famous place to get Hainanese chicken rice, Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice stall. This was the place visited by Anthony Bourdain to have his Hainanese chicken rice dish in his Singapore episode of No Reservations.

We stopped there for early lunch before going back to the hotel to head to the airport. Since it was still pretty early, there was no line yet at the stall, and we were able to get our order quite quickly. The food was good and lived up to the high expectations, though unfortunately we had to eat quite quickly as we’re running late to head to the airport for our flight back to Indonesia.

Here was the Hainanese chicken dish from Tian Tian, just before we consumed it in minutes. It’s really good, and definitely highly recommended.

We reached the last day of our Southeast Asia trip. We wanted to make the best of the remaining time we had in Singapore before our flight back to Indonesia. However, when we checked our flight schedule, we found out that there was a change in schedule for our flight to Jakarta; it was moved up by a couple of hours. So that means we had two hours less than what initially thought to spend in Singapore.

What could we do in 2-3 hours before we had to head to the airport? Initially we were hoping to go to Singapore’s Chinatown area in the morning, and then go to Little India area for lunch before heading to the airport. We decided to modify the plan to forego the Little India part, and to focus only on Chinatown.

We left our hotel around 7:30 am. There was breakfast offered at the hotel’s restaurant, but we decided to head to get something better — breakfast at one of the many Singapore hawker centres. Since we’re heading to Chinatown, we decided to pick Maxwell Road Hawker Centre. This particular Hawker Centre is located right across the street from the Chinatown area, so that would minimize the travel time.

We took a taxi to the Chinatown area. When we arrived at the Maxwell Road Hawker Centre, the place was still pretty empty as the day had just started and many of the stalls were not open yet. It was also a Sunday morning, so that might have something to do as well. There were a couple of stalls already open, however. There was one that actually already had quite a long line of people waiting to order. We looked closer, and found that the place sold congee (rice porridge). It looked pretty good, but we didn’t want to spend too much time waiting in line. So instead we looked around, and found another stall that also sold congee, but with shorter line. There were some folks who went there, so we thought it might be good enough.

Kristi and I both ordered rice porridge, but with different meats. She ordered with fish, while I ordered with thousand-year old egg. We also ordered a dish simply called ‘homemade tofu’ after seeing other people ordering that. The rice porridge was good; nothing spectacular but quite tasty and a nice meal to have to start the day. The homemade tofu, however, was something else. Somehow it was crispy on the outside, and very soft in the inside. It was served with light soy sauce. The taste was just perfect; I thought it was among the best preparation of tofu I had ever tasted.

We also found a stall that sold soybean milk. That was a nice drink to have to complement the breakfast. We were filled and ready to continue on to explore the area.

The photo below was taken from our table at the hawker centre. This was the stall where we ordered our breakfast. You can see an elderly couple at the next table, also enjoying the rice porridge. They looked like locals who come here frequently to have breakfast. It reminded me to some places near my home in Indonesia where we would go early in the morning for breakfast.