Diner's complaint about $9 chicken rice in Suntec City food court divides netizens

Chicken rice is a dish that you'd expect to find in every hawker centre — but low prices certainly aren't found everywhere.

A diner found this out the hard way after ordering a plate of chicken rice, which cost them $9, they shared in a Reddit post on Wednesday (Aug 2).

"Inflation kicking hard," wrote Redditor Randomrubberduck, adding "$9 chicken rice found at Suntec City basement food court."

Randomrubberduck also shared a photo of their food, which consisted a plate of rice, steamed chicken with sauce, two slices of cucumber, a small bowl of soup and two packets of chili.

The chicken rice didn't seem all that impressive to netizens due to its price.

"$9 for chicken rice with those portions is hard to stomach," one netizen commented.

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Questioned another: "It looks like you didn't even get a pricier part [of the chicken]… what possessed you to buy this despite the price?"

In response, the Redditor revealed that they had actually ordered a medium size portion, hence the higher price of the dish. 

Although some netizens weren't too happy with this fact, others felt that the amount of food in the upsized serving still wasn't worth the price.

A Redditor said: "Wouldn't pay more than $6 at max for that. I get that chicken rice isn't $3 to $3.50 anymore, but that's not a $9, even if the diner ordered medium size."

Added another: "Even if its medium, compared to the past, the most was $5 to $6 based on smallest plate being $3.50 or $4."

Inflation kicking hard. $9 Chicken rice found at Suntec B1 food court.
by u/Randomrubberduck in SingaporeRaw

A costly trend?

While many netizens were upset about the price of the meal, others took this as a sign of worse things to come.

"To be honest, that is probably in the realm of reasonable pricing if that was in Suntec — possibly even low," a user guessed.

"I feel Singaporeans have gotten accustomed to prices which have never reflected reality… it's a bubble that will have to burst at some point… I think everyone should prepare for even larger mark-ups."

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Tagging along with this line of reasoning, another Reddit user added their thoughts into the mix: "The only reason why food courts are so expensive is not because of the food or manpower, but the high rent."

Others also chimed in, sharing that it's difficult to find cheap food in Suntec and that this dish's price is par for the course.

"Bro went to Suntec and expected cheap food," a Redditor said.

Recommended another: "You should just buy the chicken rice from your market and eat it at Suntec instead."

Taking the 'economic' out of 'economic noodles'

Chicken rice isn't the only local dish to have seen an increase in price over the years.

On Complaint Singapore's Facebook group last year, several dissatisfied netizens griped about high food prices.

Sharing pictures of their fried noodles, they wrote about buying "economic noodles selling at [a] non-economical price" of $5.90 after they realised typical ingredients were "barely" visible in their dish.

Another post shared a photo of a plate of four side dishes with no rice from a mixed rice stall, ringing up a bill of $8.50.

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In December last year, netizens were outraged after learning that a woman had to pay $24 for a packet of nasi padang and called it "daylight robbery".

As it turned out, the exorbitant price of this nasi padang meal was high due to fish eggs in the dish, which is indeed expensive — a regular piece can go for $5 to $8 each, while larger ones could sell for $15.

khooyihang@asiaone.com

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