Will you queue to eat Michelin-starred hawker food? And how long are you prepared to queue?
Well, I have decided to give it a try when I was in Chinatown recently, although I don’t normally like to queue too long for food. It turned out to be a good 45-minute wait during non-peak hours (after 3pm), on a weekday. Perhaps this is considered not too long the wait, given its popularity way before being awarded one Michelin star last year.
S$12 for half a soya sauce chicken and S$6 for a mixture of char siew and roast pork. Very affordable prices for its “status”.
Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle – one of the two hawker food stalls that was awarded one Michelin star in 2016. The other was Hill Street Tai Hwa Pork Noodle.
The queue was divided into two parts : one in the air-con area inside the shop and the rest outside
I noticed that the queue was made up of mostly foreigners/tourists. How not to be attracted to this cheapest Michelin-starred meal in the world if you are touring Singapore?! Moreover it is the first time in the Michelin history that an Asian street food has been given this prestigious award.
It took me about 25 minutes just to have my take-away order taken, and then another 20 minutes to wait for my order to be ready. There were no separate queues for eat-in and take-away customers but overall the queue was moving smoothly and the wait was pleasant. 🙂
A very pleasant, senior-in-age male staff who was in charge of clearing and getting ready the tables for the eat-in customers, doubled-up his roles in managing the queue too. He was so nice to even offer me a stool to sit at one corner while I was waiting to collect my order. Such a nice gesture of customer care has definitely won my heart! I just hope that this uncle’s job is not too strenuous for his age.
I wonder how many chickens, and how many kilos of roast pork and Char Siew are sold each day?!
Basically there is a good numbering system for order-taking and collection of food/order. There was even a self-service order station! Cool! Unfortunately, it was under utilised based on my observation. Most people seemed to still prefer the manual ordering system over the cashier counter. I also noted that the staffs were pleasant, friendly and efficient.
So, was it worth my 45-minute wait? Yes, definitely! While hubby and I think that the char siew was quite good, the roast pork was nice but nothing spectacular. The star i.e. the soya sauce chicken, was definitely outstanding. The meat was tender, sweet and has a nice herbal fragrance. Oh, I also love the chilli which has a very shiok sourish taste that went very well with the chicken!
Together with my home-cooked Chinese spinach soup, we had a lovely dinner that day. I would surely want to go back again someday and to eat there instead.
QING Moments 