Chatterbox Chicken Rice and Lobster/King Prawn Laksa

So... According to Chatterbox's promotional materials, it is Singapore's favourite mandarin (or Hainan) chicken rice place, because it has sold over 8.5 million sets of the poor fowl to hungry carnivores like ourselves since many years ago! Well many people have said that the standard of the Chicken rice here has dipped and somewhat revived again...so what better way to ascertain that for myself (and wifey) than to actually go down there to have a taste? What's more we had a $60 dining voucher (frankly speaking that's the ONLY reason we stepped into Chatterbox as the prices are...well...CELESTIAL...to say the least :)

Here it is...the infamous chatterbox mandarin chicken rice. The chicken meat is quite tender (we specifically requested for thigh portions) and the sauce that drenches it is quite good too, like a slightly sweet form of soy sauce. The chilli sauce is not thick enough for us. Perhaps the biggest letdown is the rice itself, which although quite fragrant, has some grains which tasted uncooked and too chewy. Soup was too salty and tasted of MSG. In all, its a NOT BAD chicken rice set BUT the price is $23! Its definitely not worth that much, in my humble opinion...give me Boon Tong Kee or TianTian chicken rice any day! 2.5/5


While my wife had the chicken rice, I tried the (again supposedly) famous chatterbox lobster laksa. But as you can see, they were out of lobsters that day and substituted it with 2 King prawns instead, which the captain said had more meat and is tastier than the lobster. The laksa gravy was quite good, and other ingredients were fresh and tasty too. The King prawns as can be seen were indeed KING sized! So BIG, but the meat was slightly tough and not as sweet as I would have liked. The extra bowl of laksa gravy was given FOC in case you crave for more but I did not even touch it. I have had better Laksa at hawker centres and hawker prices. Chatterbox Lobster/King prawn laksa: $32! (excluding 10% service charge, 1% cess AND 5% gst). 2.5/5

Location: Meritus Mandarin Singapore, Chatterbox coffee house