Is It Cheeecken You’re Looking For? 🍗

The Mongolian Chicken is another of their bestsellers at Big Bird. We topped up for the kampung fried rice, and it came with sautéed onions and a fried egg, with chilli powder sprinkled on top. The Mongolian Chicken is definitely a spicier option, but we enjoyed it really much. The sauce was creamy and thick, and it didn’t make the chicken soggy at all. Not such a big fan or onions, so I wish we could’ve changed the side to a different veg, but it wasn’t too bad.

Overall, a very very filling meal for less than $10 with great service and friendly staff. There’s not much seating at the kiosk, only about 5-6 seats, so it’s primarily a takeaway joint. Would recommend for a quick lunch or dinner!

One of the new ‘takeout’ joints inhabiting the Harbourfront Center basement. Big Bird serves up a chicken-heavy menu with Mongolian Chicken, Salted Egg Chicken and more.

As first timers, we were recommended the Mongolian Chicken and Salted Egg Chicken as they’re the best sellers. These come as ‘sets’ with plain or garlic rice, fried egg, some veg or sides which you can see on the menu. Top up an additional $1 for kampung fried rice instead of regular rice, and top up $2.50 for an additional side (egg, veg, etc) and a drink.

I got the salted egg chicken rice with kampung fried rice, additional broccoli and water. For approximately $10, this was a super filling meal. The rice, chicken, and sides were prepared to order, so the box came steaming hot. The food is packaged in a “Chinese takeout” box, which the staff helped to open up at the edges so it’d open up as a plate (honestly didn’t know it could open like that! #noob 😂)

The amount of rice and chicken given was super generous. Probably also because it was close to closing time, the staff mentioned he threw in more ingredients for us. The salted egg chicken was crispy and the meat tender, while the sauce was pretty fragrant and had a strong salted egg flavour. The sauce here isn’t the creamy type, it was more grainy but it was thick and gao. I think they probably mash whole egg yolks inside rather than using a powder mix.

The kampung fried rice is slightly spicy, and comes packed with ingredients - shallots, tiny pieces of chicken, long beans and more. The fried rice is certainly very delicious and worth the top up! I didn’t particularly find the eggs very appetising as they were all pre-cooked, and looked like they had been out for a while, but thankfully the texture wasn’t too rubbery or gross.

If you’re small eaters, I think one box might be enough for two with the addition of a side or two. Though I appreciate the preset menus with the various types of chicken, I wish they’d provide more flexibility with the menus with a DIY Bowl sheet (perhaps it’s possible), so you could customise your own bowl if you wanted to, rather than just adding on certain sides. That said, with such delicious food and great service, I’ll definitely be back for more!

Note that this Mini Wok stall is no longer operating at NUS PGP Residences but have shifted to SP about 3 years ago - I’m not sure what the exact address is. I used to frequent this place when I was staying in KE Hall. Cereal Chicken and Salted Egg Chicken with fried egg were our staples, especially when hall dinner was dismal. A colleague was around SP today and offered to buy this back for us, so I jumped at the offer. Having this cereal chicken with rice really takes me back. I only ate it about 3 hours later so it was cold, and it’s definitely not the best cereal chicken ever, but the nostalgia of eating this dish is real. Despite being cold, the chicken was still crispy, and the cereal was mostly crunchy too (with the exception of some pieces on top that became soggy due to condensation). The cereal chicken is as fragrant as ever due to the curry leaves and chilli padi, and one thing I like in particular about this stall is that they fry the cereal with egg so you can see bits of egg yolks clinging to the cereal. Yums.

This portion was with extra chicken, which only cost an additional $1, but it’s so worth it! Just look at that mountain of cereal chicken with rice for $4.80.

From what my colleague said, the same two friendly guys run the stall at SP! I would definitely try to make a trip down personally and get the salted egg chicken with egg!

Instead of reordering the chicken dishes we had, we decided to try the Smoked Spring Chicken (1/2 Chicken, $10.80 - also eligible for Burpple Beyond Main Dish offer).

Can I just say that all the cutlery and plates they use here are super pretty?! The marbling and gold rims are just 😍

The chicken is served deboned, smoked in house with cherry wood, and brushed with homemade BBQ sauce. The thigh meat was incredibly tender and melt-in-your-mouth. It’s super flavourful, with a beautiful smokey aroma. Unfortunately the breast meat was still a little tough and dry, and none of us really appreciate breast meat so that was wasted on us. Overall a great meat dish and if you like spring chicken - go for this, but with other better chicken options on the menu, I wouldn’t order this when I make a return trip.

Another dish from the Chicken menu at Easy Noodles Bar are the Chicken Tortellinis (6pcs, $9.80). There’s an option to have them served dry or in soup, but our server recommended having them dry as we had ordered a bowl of noodle soup which share the same soup base. It was the right choice to have them dry for sure as the plump wantons were served atop a layer of fragrant oil and chilli powder. The taste of the oil was reminiscent of chilli vinaigrette, but not as sour as many Chinese restaurants. Even my dad, who doesn’t like vinegar, enjoyed this sauce.

For the dumplings, they were stuffed with minced chicken meat and a whole crystal prawn. The crystal prawn was super crunchy and shiok! Plus the minced meat was flavoured just right - sweet and bursting with flavour.

I loved this dish so much, all of us did - and I’d have to say this was my top dish of the night! We were contemplating reordering the tortellinis because they were just that good. If you aren’t ordering the noodle soup, I think ordering two sets of tortellinis (dry and soup) would be the way to go because the chicken broth is amazing as well - and who wouldn’t want more of these amazing wantons?!

The highlights of Easy Noodles Bar are the meat dishes, unlike what their name suggests. We shared 3 chicken dishes (all of which are eligible for Burpple Beyond main dish redemption) - and the Chicken Roulade (2pcs, $8.80) was the free dish. The chicken roulade is stuffed with mince chicken, leek, shiso leaves, and egg yolk, with beautifully seasoned and charred chicken skin on top to complete the roll. The meat is super tender, juicy and flavourful, two pieces didn’t seem like enough! Definitely a dish we would order again (and one that we were pondering about reordering right then too!).

The Chinese delights and soup stall at this Kopitiam is one of the stalls open till late. When we arrived at 9.10pm, most of the stalls had already packed up. I guess it’s because the soups are kept in a steamer cabinet rather than a vat which is why they can stay open longer. The herbal chicken was pre-packed in foil and kept in the same steamer cabinet.

A half chicken is wrapped in the foil. The broth itself is pretty good - the herb flavours do come through nicely, but this is nicely balanced with sweetness from the wolfberries. The herbs were stewed so long that they were quite tasteless already, but they were tender and made for nice ingredients to munch on since there were no veggie options left. For the chicken itself, the meat from the drumstick and the wing was tender, but the rest of the meat was tough and frankly quite tasteless. I ended up using lots of dark soy sauce and chilli sauce in my meal.

I wouldn’t order this again. Even the rice felt pretty tasteless, and I usually like rice.

Ordered the Imperial Ginger Chicken for dinner right before Maroon 5 concert. There was a really long queue and tons of people hogging tables and waiting for tables but thankfully we managed to get a seat. The staff were pretty overwhelmed and in a rush to deliver orders to the tables - dishes took approx 30 mins to be served, rice came later than the main dishes, quite a lot of soups got splashed about or forgotten, and general chaos ensued. Thankfully the food wasn’t served cold. It wasn’t exactly hot but it was great to dig in immediately which was what we needed for a quick meal before the concert.

The imperial ginger chicken was fantastic. The ginger paste was reminiscent of a certain restaurant’S famous Samsui Chicken, made even better with the tender chicken legs used in their variety of chicken dishes. It was a perfect pairing with the chicken rice chilli and dark soy sauce provided. The chicken rice was also flavourful and fragrant. Can’t comment on the soup because ours was forgotten and we didn’t have time nor want to burden the poor waiters and waitresses further. Overall this was a great meal, and my friend really enjoyed the steamed fish and chips too. Might consider making a trip down even when there’s no concert just to try the rest of the menu and use the Burpple Beyond Set deals!

Love how tender this chicken is! It’s succulent, juicy and bursting with flavour. Don’t even have to bother with bones cos it’s all been deboned (extra points for that 😂 - lazy person alert) OFC opens till super late so you can always satisfy your korean fried or oven grilled chicken cravings even at midnight. Am tempted to order the full portion next time and dapao the rest of the chicken home!