Tao Yuan

Tao Yuan Restaurant in Malate. Our home for the next decade or so.

I've never been to Singapore nor tasted authentic Hainanese chicken/ chicken rice. The ones I've tried were either home-cooked or ordered from Chinese restaurants. N would always rave about the chicken rice in Singapore, and I never understood why. To tell you frankly, I wasn't a big fan of the dish. I'd always remember the ones I ate before, and they weren't all that good. Just okay. Normal chicken. But N said the one he tried in Singapore was different. So I got curious and did a bit of reading.

 F, N and I walking to Tao Yuan

When I searched for authentic hainanese chicken in the internet, two popular answers kept on popping out: Tao Yuan in Malate and Stevie Villacin's chicken rice in Bel-Air. I jotted down their contact details because I thought N might want to try their chicken.

Tao Yuan Hainanese Chicken

It took a while before N and I got to try out one of them. I knew we couldn't try Stevie Villacin's chicken since they only offer party-sized servings to go, so Tao Yuan was going to be the first on my list. I tried to convince N to eat at Tao Yuan with me, but he kept on saying it was too far. I knew, with much prodding, that he'd budge, and last Sunday was the day he finally agreed to go all the way to Malate and try that damn chicken from Tao Yuan. We also thought of making this a Soapbox event and invited F,R and C. F and R were game and immediately got out of bed, while C had a shoot and had to miss the experience.

Tao Yuan looked like your typical Chinese resto. Red, gold, and Chinese fixtures all over the place. We were surprised at how packed the place was. The newspaper clippings on the wall contributed to the building excitement. This was going to be good...

F and R. No, I doubt F knew the table cloth would match his shirt.

And it was. More than just good. It was HEAVEN! It was fine weather! It was a billion dollars! It was clean elections! It was world peace! You get the point. The place became so special that we vowed to only bring special people with us every time we'd eat there. As if the place weren't popular enough!

N slightly disappointed that someone already became the mayor of Tao Yuan in Foursquare.

Each one of us must have uttered some kind of profanity at least 5 times while eating.

Braised peanuts. Holy s#@*%! Even the peanuts are good. R ordered another bowl of peanuts and guarded it throughout our lunch.

Cereal prawns. Damn.. Ang sarap!

Lapu-Lapu with Mango sauce. Oh my God. Masarap pa din.

Then at last. The chicken. Oh the chicken. I am a convert. God bless Singapore. It's so beautiful! N's plate is a happy one.

Now, the chicken. What can I say? All the other versions I've tried in the past could not compare. No wonder I didn't like hainanese chicken that much before. They never tasted like this! Food critics, supply me with better adjectives! The skin was wow! The meat was whoa! The sauce was yum! And did I mention the rice? Somehow we managed to eat 8 cups!

The Rice. My mom always told me that if I didn't finish my rice, I'd end up eating them in purgatory someday. Pffft... Well if they cooked it this way...

After we ate everything, F began to wonder about dessert. He challenged the Tao Yuan gods by saying: "Bilib na ko pag masarap pati yung dessert." And just like that, his challenge was accepted... because the dessert was not only good... It was FREE.

Melon sago. Cold. Refreshing. Sweet. EFFING FREE.