Sergeant Chicken Rice
We had dinner at Sergeant Chicken Rice at the Taikoo Shing foodcourt after watching Sex & the City. To be honest, for all the greatness that is the Cityplaza mall, their food options suck.
Chicken rice set
The chicken rice here is, in my opinion, the best in Hong Kong. But in the bigger scheme of things it’s the average hawker center chicken rice. There are many places here that profess to sell chicken rice, but none do it “right”. Not the HK versions, let alone the HK slash Thai style Hainanese chicken rice (that’s a mouthful). The faux versions sold at some Singapore restaurants are below average. So here, Sergeant is the big kahuna.
The chicken isn’t too fatty and still succulent. I could’ve done with a little more skin. Actually, more than the chicken, I love that they provide unlimited sweet black soy sauce which just makes chicken rice come alive. In fact, it can mask flaws such as a watery ginger sauce. What it cannot do is make the rice very much better. It clearly lacked the richness and greasiness. I mean, if I want my artery clogged from time to time, I’ll like to have the whole nine yards. At HK$50 for the chicken rice set with vegetables (nothing to write home about), it is expensive.
For dessert we shared a bowl of cheng teng. OK, this was disappointing, because I make better cheng teng at home. It was watery and the longans were limp and tasteless. It obviously has been boiled too long. It’s unfair I know to make those comparisons to desserts from home, but the disappointment is unmistakable. Where can I get my fix of tau suan, ice kachang, ice jelly…ok, I must stop before I become depressed.
On a separate point, HK really doesn’t have a food court culture. When we walked out we saw a line outside pizza hut waiting to get in. Hmm, why not consider the food court where you can be seated and eating in 10 minutes, instead of seriously bad fast food after 45 minutes. But I digress, every city’s different.
