Hong Kong has plenty of Hainanese Chicken Rice. Available year round at Tsui Wah, Food Republic food courts, and various other Hoi Nam aka Hainanese chicken specialty shops. Rarely did I find a place that serves excellent Hainanese chicken rice....until Old TownThe scoop: For the lunch time deal, arrive before 12:00pm to get a guaranteed seat without waiting. Lunch sets start at 88 HKD and come with a hot or cold barley drink. They have about 8-9 different lunch items and the a la carte menu on the right. For $10-25 HKD you can upgrade your drink to something different (range bound as the upper end is for a fresh coconut and the lower end is for a soda) Pay your check before 12:50 pm to obtain a 20% discount off your bill. Keep in mind there is a 10% service charge.The Experience: Clean restaurant, all sets are served on lunch trays and the plates are porcelain instead of plastic. Hong Kong has a love affair with plastic plates and bowls as they are rather unbreakable but as a diner I find plastic repulsive. Oily residue tends to cling to plastics and often times it is never truly clean. Old town has got this right. They serve everything on porcelain. Retains the heat and the food tastes a lot better. 2 thumbs up for this execution.Unfortunately my friends hainanese chicken rice had a hair in it albeit it was well presented. After alerting the server, they quickly took the plate away and my friend changed his order to a fried rice noodle dish with prawns. That being said, I do believe the hair was an outlier and outside the 95% confidence interval of a normal distribution. Chalk it up to bad luck. Service shined through as they replaced my friends order with the fried noodle. No fuss and an apology. Very welcome in a brutal HK environment sometimes.Hainanese Chicken Rice Set Breakdown (88 HKD + 20% off prior to 12:50pm):Soup: Served in a nice porcelain steamer soup bowl (individual portion) there were two pieces of winter melon with the skin still on. Soup was robust and deep in flavor. Only complaint here is that I wish it could be hotter. What I think they did was they poured the hot soup into a cold porcelain dish which quickly dissipated the heat. To remedy this, they should rinse all the porcelain bowls with piping hot water prior to pouring the soup in to maintain optimal temperatures. Rookie mistake folks. Ramen shops got this technique down like nobody's business.Chicken: excellent presentation with 4 slices of cucumber and a cilantro sprig on top. The chicken is de-boned with the exception of a wingette piece cut in half. Some of the chicken had excess fat and skin but that is not the fault of the preparation but more these chickens they have in HK. I find the skin excessively thick but the cooking method was tasty and the result is a very good hainanese chicken...too bad HK chicken isnt the best. Rice: a perfect molded bowl of fragrant chicken rice. Possessing excellent tones of shallots and chicken stock without being too greasy. Superb rice. Wish I could have got a complimentary refill on the rice.Sauces: comes with the standard trifecta of ginger pulp in oil, spicy chili/sambal vinegar, and thick dark soy. The good thing here is the ginger pulp sauce isn’t watered down like other places and you get a real good consistency...one that you would want to put on your chicken and have it stay their via its thicker consistency and weight. I find often times the ginger pulp at other hoi nam chicken places is diluted or watered down and it almost feels like you are rinsing your chicken off in ginger water vs saucing it. I like to sauce like a boss so i usually take the chicken and give it a light paint of the dark soy, i then proceed to dip it in the chili vinegar, and finally give it a nice ginger pulp protection coat like a diamond coating after a rigorous car wash. Old Town was able to give me the complete sauce experience.Verdict: This place had the best Hainanese chicken I've had in HK thus far. I enjoyed the cleanliness and service. The product was top quality as well. If I lived in a perfect world I would wish the chicken skin wasn't so thick and fatty and that I could get another bowl of rice. @ 77.44 HKD net discount and service charge, I would say this place is a definite repeat for lunch. If you are tired of eating Hainanese chicken rice served on plastic, check out Old Town.
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