Ah Tai Hainanese Chicken Rice – Singapore

Hainanese Chicken Rice is the quintessential example of a meal that can – under the right circumstances – be far more appealing than it looks or sounds. The chicken is pale from poaching, its light tan color sometimes barely contrasting the rice on its side and green cucumber slices on the plate. To a first-timer, it looks like a bodybuilder’s meal, not something exalted by regular people across an entirely country or a subcontintent. Then you taste it, and if it’s made well, you understand.

Prepared in the Hainanese style, the chicken meat should be tender and silky, the product of a fresh whole chicken that’s boiled intact with its skin lightly salted, then iced to lock in its juices. The dish is called Hainanese Chicken Rice because the rice is specially prepared – mixed with chicken fat and garlic, then cooked with the stock left over from boiling the chicken. These steps collectively multiply the flavors of what appear to be plain chicken and plain rice, really bringing out the natural potency of what is too often a light, bland poultry flavor. Then soy and chili dipping sauces are placed on the side as accents, along with a bowl of broth.

As simple as the preparation may sound, there’s an art to making this dish that is worth experiencing in Singapore, where the dish is believed to have been invented by chefs from Hainan, China. At the city’s Maxwell Food Center, a dozen-year-old shop called Ah Tai Hainanese Chicken Rice produces what’s widely believed to be one of the best versions – more tender, better sauces – competing with the chef’s former employer at Tian Tian several stalls down. Each shop spawns lines, Tian Tian’s longer due to Michelin attention.