Many places in Taipei purport to serve Hainanese chicken rice (海南雞飯), but very few of them serve anything that has much relationship to the dish as found in Southeast Asia, especially Singapore, where it is regarded as something of a national dish. With the opening of Boon Keng Chi Chicken (文慶雞新加坡文東記雞飯), real Singapore-style Hainanese chicken rice has arrived, showing up most of its rivals for the pale imitations that they are.
The establishment is the first overseas venture of Singapore’s well-known Boon Tong Kee (文東記雞飯) chicken rice chain, and it prides itself on serving chicken rice the Singapore way. This is different from Taiwan’s own equally ubiquitous white cut chicken (白斬雞), which it closely resembles in appearance. Sadly, Boon Keng Chi Chicken has found it necessary to make concessions to local tastes, which inevitably give rise to disappointment in anyone who has experienced the real deal. The giveaway is in the skin — whereas Singaporeans prize a silky, almost melt-in-your-mouth chicken skin, the Boon Keng Chi in Taipei goes for a more robust texture.
The establishment’s signature dish, the Hainanese chicken leg and rice set menu (海南腿肉套餐) serves up chicken, which apart from the caveat above, is tender and marvelously succulent. From the first bite, there is little doubt that this a cut above your average white cut chicken. Unfortunately, without denying the quality, the set comes across as a little stingy, with a plate of bean sprouts as the vegetable, an unimaginative black glutinous rice sweet and a choice of a soup or beverage for NT$230. The chicken soup, which makes use of the chicken’s organ meat (下水湯), is very good, but the barley water (薏米水, NT$35), also a favorite accompaniment for this dish in Southeast Asia, was too sweet and rather insipid. The Indian-style milk tea (NT$60) also lacked character.
PHOTO: IAN BARTHOLOMEW, TAIPEI TIMES
Extra portions of meat are available for NT$90; half a chicken is NT$310. The highlight of the meal is actually the rice, which is cooked in chicken stock and flavored with coconut, and should be eaten with a dribble of dark, sweet soy sauce. The chili sauce, while much better than what you get at most street food outlets, has little fire, and one suspects that this is yet another concession to local tastes.
Another signature dish, the curry chicken leg (咖哩雞腿套餐, NT$230), didn’t really cut the mustard either with its rather bland curry, although, once again, the chicken was well prepared.
While most customers visiting Boon Keng Chi Chicken will probably go for the chicken, it should be noted that the restaurant has a wide choice of Southeast Asian favorites including satay, lemon fish and pork chops. But given the focus on the chicken, the relatively small size of the establishment and its hawker stall atmosphere, these seem rather superfluous. The quality of the cooking and the service are both good, and if Boon Keng Chi Chicken could lift its game in the presentation, rather than padding out a big menu, it could easily be serving the best chicken rice in town.
Towering high above Taiwan’s capital city at 508 meters, Taipei 101 dominates the skyline. The earthquake-proof skyscraper of steel and glass has captured the imagination of professional rock climber Alex Honnold for more than a decade. Tomorrow morning, he will climb it in his signature free solo style — without ropes or protective equipment. And Netflix will broadcast it — live. The event’s announcement has drawn both excitement and trepidation, as well as some concerns over the ethical implications of attempting such a high-risk endeavor on live broadcast. Many have questioned Honnold’s desire to continues his free-solo climbs now that he’s a
As Taiwan’s second most populous city, Taichung looms large in the electoral map. Taiwanese political commentators describe it — along with neighboring Changhua County — as Taiwan’s “swing states” (搖擺州), which is a curious direct borrowing from American election terminology. In the early post-Martial Law era, Taichung was referred to as a “desert of democracy” because while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was winning elections in the north and south, Taichung remained staunchly loyal to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). That changed over time, but in both Changhua and Taichung, the DPP still suffers from a “one-term curse,” with the
Jan. 26 to Feb. 1 Nearly 90 years after it was last recorded, the Basay language was taught in a classroom for the first time in September last year. Over the following three months, students learned its sounds along with the customs and folktales of the Ketagalan people, who once spoke it across northern Taiwan. Although each Ketagalan settlement had its own language, Basay functioned as a common trade language. By the late 19th century, it had largely fallen out of daily use as speakers shifted to Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), surviving only in fragments remembered by the elderly. In
Lines between cop and criminal get murky in Joe Carnahan’s The Rip, a crime thriller set across one foggy Miami night, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Damon and Affleck, of course, are so closely associated with Boston — most recently they produced the 2024 heist movie The Instigators there — that a detour to South Florida puts them, a little awkwardly, in an entirely different movie landscape. This is Miami Vice territory or Elmore Leonard Land, not Southie or The Town. In The Rip, they play Miami narcotics officers who come upon a cartel stash house that Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon)
RSS