Hai Kee Soy Sauce Chicken (Changi Road)

Really hyped, and thinking it's due to my specific order of fatty parts that my first batch of charsiew wasn't crispy, I asked for another plate and specifically requested it to be crispy.

Unfortunately, apparently it's no fluke. Even the darkened parts weren't particularly crispy, let's chalk it up to bad luck today. In fact, this chopped up version was a lot less satisfying. The whole chunks had a much better mouthfeel

Char siew was q fatty&tender, and I loved the sauce which probably had some alcohol in it, for the complexity in flavour and the balance of sweet and savoury.

Siobak was good as well, skin was crispy in the hard way, with a lot of clean porky flavours.

Soup was also not the normal thin kind, this one was a proper chicken soup with some viscosity

However, nothing was particularly game-changing

Look man, all I’m saying is that @veronicaphua posts are highly dangerous. Why? Well, her posts about @haikeesg are the reason why I decided to get me half a soya sauce chicken ($16), a hearty serving of char siew ($10) and sio bak (roasted pork belly, also $10).⠀
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But what about their food? Well, unfortunately, their soya sauce chicken was average at best. It was a touch overcooked, and was dry at the breasts. It relied a little too much on the accompanying sauce for flavour, and the meat itself wasn’t particularly memorable. The silky skin was a nice touch though.⠀
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What you’re really here for is their palate perfect porcine. The char siew was delightfully fatty in all the right places, and was stupendously sapid with just a little touch of sweetness in that caramelised crust. The spice rub & glaze on the char siew was already awesome, but the sio bak was on another plane of existence altogether.⠀
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The five spice fragrace was pleasant & perfumed the pork perfectly, and the pork itself was juicy, moist and sumptuously stellar. As for the skin...oh brother. It was crispy as a cracker, and so, so good. Incredibly enjoyable and irresistibly indulgent, I tell you what. Best yet, it was probably the sio bak with the least grease within that I’ve ever had.

As for the rice, it was fabulously fragrant and utterly unctuous. Cooked to perfection and bustling with the aroma of the chicken fat & stock it was cooked in, Hai Kee has elevated plain ol’ white rice into an ascended form of carbohydrate. The chili was subtly sour & savagely spicy, and had enough garlic in it to kill Count Dracula. In short: that’s some good chicken rice chili, fam!
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While @haikeesg certainly have a long way to go with their soya sauce chicken, they’re definitely one of the premier pork merchants in Singapore right now.

Here’s a haiku for Hai Kee:

“Char worn like armour
to protect the juiciness
but to no avail.”

For a soya sauce chicken stall, Hai Kee sure does good roasted meats. And although I’m Team “Sio Bak” for life, their “Char Siew” is delicious enough to entice me to cross over temporarily.
Roasted till the edges are charred, the marinated meat is invitingly juicy and tender, and not overly sweet. It is executed so well that with one bite, it made me instantly regret not buying a bigger portion. So be sure to avoid making my mistake when you order takeaway from them.

Thanks to my parents who are fans of the Soya Sauce Chicken from @haikeesg, I have started to frequent the stall too. The one I visit is in the corner coffeeshop at the junction of Telok Kurau and Changi Road.
Their chicken is really smooth and delicious as it is properly saturated in the light but fragrant braising sauce. There doesn’t seem to be much visible fat on the flavourful skin, so I have been happily wolfing everything down.
The condiments here are worth a mention because there’s a fiery hot chilli (my fave!), a cooked oil-based ginger and spring onion sauce (my mum’s must-have) and a regular fresh ginger dip.
Pricing is very reasonable too. I paid about $33 for the lunch for two pax shown above, plus a takeaway order of half a chicken for my parents.

Headed by budding entrepreneurs who revamped the stall passed on from their parents, the stall is digitalized, menu was fully digital and accepted grabpay, which was the reason why I was there actually. Got a 2 person set meal for $10, and there was a good amount of soy sauce chicken which was tender and succulent, so juicy! The rice was so good even on it’s own. Do give them a try!