Boon Tong Kee: Best chicken rice in Singapore

One of the top things I wanted to eat during my trip to Singapore was chicken rice, AKA Hainanese chicken. For those who don’t know what Hainanese chicken is, it is served cold (well not really cold, but not hot is what I mean) and the chicken is poached. They serve it with “oil” rice and usually has chili sauce and other garnishes like cucumbers.

We have 2 friends that moved to Singapore, and they told us that their favourite chicken rice is at Boon Tong Kee, a Chinese restaurant that first started serving chicken rice back in 1979! So we had to check them out for dinner.

Interior

So Boon Tong Kee doesn’t really take reservations. We tried calling ahead of time to ask if there is a long wait, to which the lady actually yelled at us over the phone and said “Just come!” 😂

There was a wait when we arrived for dinner at around 7pm. We waited for 20-40 minutes outside (they provide some chairs).

Once inside, we were seated on the first floor with the same chairs we were sitting on outside. The table had a cute brown checkered tablecloth, which looked strangely out of place to me in this Chinese restaurant, but our table was spacious for 4 people.

Food review

Here is everything we ordered to share between 4 adults. SGD and CAD are almost 1:1 conversion, so I’ve just left the currency as it is and rounded it to the nearest dollar.

Prices are based off of the dine-in website menu. If you order via a food delivery app, expect prices to be higher.

Thick soup with crab meat and fish maw ($22-60)

This photo is kinda blurred but I swear Chinese restaurants around the world don’t give a fuck about Instagram because they will just start serving stuff right away before anyone gets a chance to take a photo 😓.

Anyways, this soup is exactly what it sounds like – it has a thick consistency which is really silky and smooth. Inside it has crab meat and fish maw, making it quite a luxurious soup full of seafood and umami. The soup really warms up my heart – highly recommend!

They offer different sizes – $22 for 2-4 people, $44 for 4-6 people, and $60 for 6-10 people.

Crispy bean curd ($9)

I suppose bean curd is now synonymous with tofu, as this is essentially large pieces of deep fried tofu.

The crispy bean curd at Boon Tong Kee has a nice thin crispy layer and the inside is very soft! Be careful when eating though because the inside is pretty hot and can burn your tongue.

Fried long bean with bean curd cube ($13)

For our one vegetable dish on the table, our friends order the fried long beans that are actually chopped up into smaller pieces. Mixed in is more deep fried bean curd, nuts and some minced pork.

This dish was actually quite tasty and has some nice texture between the crunchy beans and nuts to the cubes of tofu and minced pork. It also had a pretty decent “wok hay”, which kind of just means lots of fire in a wok? Not sure how to explain it if you don’t speak Cantonese. I think the easiest way to describe it is that it is just a good stir-fry.

Deep fried prawn toast ($5 per piece)

I love shrimp/prawns so I was pretty excited for this prawn toast because it sounded amazing. You need a minimum order of 4 and they are actually quite big for each piece! The prawn is minced up and then fried on a little toast bread. I like dipping it in the sweet & sour sauce and it wasn’t too oily either.

Imperial pork ribs ($16)

This one came in a pretty small portion, but the pork ribs were very tender and had a savoury sauce on it and sesame seeds.

Signature boiled chicken ($6-36)

Here we are folks! The famous signature boiled chicken!

We got a half order, but they have a variety of different amounts ranging from $6 (single) to $36 for a full chicken.

The chicken is really good. It has this nice thin layer of gelatin under the skin, that gives it a kind of fatty flavour. The chicken meat is very moist and not dry at all, delicious even if you eat it separately from the skin. I liked dipping it in the ginger paste, chili sauce and the light soy sauce all together with a bowl of rice.

Final thoughts

Loewe’s rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Everything we ate at Boon Tong Kee was delicious! Of course, the star was the chicken – such a simple dish that deserves to be their signature. And since Singapore is pretty hot for us, it is nice that it isn’t a hot dish.

Other must-get items I would recommend are the crispy beancurd, the crab and fish maw soup and the prawn toast.

This was our first dinner in Singapore and we are super pleased with the quality of Chinese food in Singapore so far – very authentic and reasonably priced. You will surely find chicken rice for under $10 at any hawker and also at every other restaurant down the street, but I would recommend you try Boon Tong Kee as we really liked the food here. Thank you Bella and Ivan for taking us!

Sincerely, Loewe