Delicious Boneless Chicken Rice @ Katong Shopping Centre

admin December 23, 2018

1,942 4 minutes read

Story by Goh Wei Kiat

One of the best thing in Singapore is our food culture, Singaporean literally can take any kind of cuisines the world throw at us and we will enjoy it. Like many other island state countries, Singapore is a large melting pot of people from different cultures and of course, cuisines. You can find food at every corner of the street, there are a lot of restaurants around the area as well, but Singaporeans and foreign friends alike still love to go to the hawker centre for their meals.

One common thing that most people like about hawker centres are the friendly uncles and aunties, some of them might even witness you grow from a young chap to a fine adult. For many years, that is what we witnessed, but if we see someone of our age appears behind the counter cooking our favourite dish, we tend to not hide our curiosity. Just so happen, there is one very famous chicken rice stall in the east with a young and suave man leading it.

One of the most common and most loved hawker food has got to be Chicken Rice. There are several styles of chicken rice and many people love it for various reasons. I, personally, love it because of the tenderness of the “white chicken” and the subtle changes to the styles between different stall owners. The east side of our small island happens to be one of the toughest battleground of food, just along the stretch of Mountbatten road, there are two of the biggest chicken rice chain restaurant in Singapore. However, there is one Chicken Rice that stands out among many food lovers and still somehow, unknown to many people. This chicken rice stall is named Delicious Boneless Chicken Rice.

Big and small,old and young, they visit this humble chicken rice stall.

An article written by Singapore American back in 2003 about the stall. (Photo provided by Delicious Boneless Chicken Rice)

This humble chicken rice stall first opens its shuttle back in 1988, at the People’s Park Complex, it then was moved to Katong Shopping Centre and has not move to any other location since then. Mr Goh Boon Hua, founder and current owner of Delicious Boneless Chicken Rice, he grew up in the farm during the 1960s, with limited education, like many during the early days of Singapore, practical skills like culinary are more valued to survive in the society. For three decades, Mr Goh has operated this stall with his wife, went through many crisis like the SARS pandemic, H1N1, 1997 Asian Economy Crisis and many more. Time has proved that this humble stall will stand through everything that were thrown at them, and now, Mr Goh is readying his youngest son, Soki Goh, to take over the stall.

Even a simple Cabbage soup tastes incredible.

Before we talk about the young man, let’s talk about chicken rice, it is the most important thing for any food lover. This is the classic “White Chicken”, accompanied with the fragrant rice and soup. Look the succulent chicken, not only the size of the chicken meat is larger than many others, the chicken is tender to the bite and not flaky. The sauce further enhances the savoury of the chicken, the fried garlic and coriander bring the fragrance to a whole new level, and the taste of the soup is also heavenly. Yes, some people like corianders, we exist. Other than the chicken, the chicken feet and Ah Cha are also the fan favourite of many customers. Simply put, you can’t find anything identical elsewhere.

The hunk of Delicious Boneless Chicken Rice.

At the young age of 27, Soki Goh started his full-time endeavor to inherit all the skills from his father in the art of culinary and managing the stall. Spending some time with Mr. Soki, it has shown that despite at that young age, he is most certainly wiser than many people. Soki said that many people of his age choose to work in a white collar job and sometimes even hate their jobs. To him, he savory to allow his father’s delicacy and legacy die off when his father retires and thus he favorites up the mantle and continuing the journey of hawker delicacy. Soki also mentioned that he would like to expand this stall into a franchise, although it might take some time for it to come to fruition. When asked about any interesting incident that he saw as a hawker, Soki mentioned that he had seen many people dive at the very moment when there is a free item. Soki said that there are many customers jumped into and sometimes aggressively, demanding free items or more free items. When the said customers were told that they have to pay for the extra items, they were angered. Soki wants to say that despite their salad is free on the first serving, don’t demand for a second serving for free. It stills requires manpower, craftsmanship, time and ingredients for them to bring you the free salad.

Culinary skills take time to cultivate and it is good to start early.

Having said that, Soki Goh, the youngest son of Mr Goh, is now learning the culinary skills from his father. Soki also recently worked out a better management method to the hawker culture to increase efficiency, according to him, it is working in favour of the stall. In the light of all positivity, Soki is looking ahead for Delicious Boneless Chicken Riceto expand further from a stall in a food court.

So if you want to have a fantastic chicken rice, or to look at the suave Soki, or both, this is how you can reach it. The closest MRT station is Dakota station, you can board either bus 10 or 32 outside Old Airport Road block 99, alight at Katong Shopping Centre five stops later. If you are driving, you can find the address as follow: