we popped by chatterbox yesterday for dinner en route from work. the entire meritus mandarin is quite the construction mess, so much so my partner thought the entire hotel was closed. good thing i had called in the morning for a reservation, and if they could take the reservation that meant it wasnt closed.

so anyway we were at chatterbox primarily to give their terribly famous (and terribly expensive) chicken rice a go. on the menu the chicken rice is described as the following:

Mandarin chicken rice - our famous hainanese chicken rice
Tender boiled chicken rice with fragrant rice, broth ginger, secret chilli and specially brewed dark soya sauce

(not quite grammatically correct but who cares.) so anyway my partner and i did enjoy the chicken rice alot. the chicken is white chicken and essentially unsalted, because there are three separate condiment trays of their garlic chilli, ginger broth dip and sweet dark soya sauce that you can dip your chicken (or rice) into. The chilli was really garlicky and spicy! (good) the ginger broth dip i did not have much off because the chilli was full of garlic and i thought it clashed with the ginger. sort of like, too much of a good thing. the dark soya sauce was sweet (salty) and actually not the usual viscous type you see at various chicken rice stalls - it was rather liquified. which was good, because it wasnt too intensely sweet or salty that way.


the chicken was pretty decently portioned, but the rice too little to accomodate that much chicken i felt. but there were no bones in the chicken whatsoever, and the skin easily came off. The meat was pretty succulent. And i guess i understand now why some people think the chicken rice pretty bland, but this is healthy! youre supposed to dip the chicken in as much sauce as you'd like, not have it already pre-dipped. The rice was a little disappointing, it looked like it had been cooked ages ago, although to their credit it wasnt hard or anything like that.

the chicken rice set also comes with a bowl of clear soup with shredded lettuce and one nice piece of tofu which my partner absolutely loved. the soup was clear and wasnt salty, and we thought it complimented the chicken rice very well in its own simple way. i did not like the fried onions in the soup though. not only were they oily, they were hard and tasted like they been fried long ago.

ambience wise i didnt think it was nice - particularly because they seem to have moved chatterbox up and down (it is occupying the former revolving triple three restaurant space i think) to accomodate the ongoing construction. and then they boarded up this space behind where we were sitting for their staff to pour drinks that people order. lighting was dim, and tables were not cleared promptly. the waitstaff were however, quite polite. great view from where we were seated, so it was a pity everything out was dark and we couldnt make out much.

it is quite a chore getting to chatterbox - you have to switch lifts and all that just to get to the 38th floor and youve also got to queue for the lifts! so i really dont think its worth that much of an effort. we also didnt order anything else because everything there was really quite the rip off and also we were trying to keep dinner small. we did try to go to bakerzin at paragon later but there was like a freaking queue so we gave up and went home.