[CLOSED] Union Farm Eating House: Paper Wrapped Chicken

After a failed foray into chicken farming, proprietor Chia Sek Hong decided to diversify into the food business featuring poultry has its star dish. With a secret recipe acquired from a Chinese opera artiste, Chia started Union Farm Eating House (“Union Farm”) back in year 1962, serving up finger-searing-hot zi bao ji (paper-wrapped chicken) using freshly slaughtered resident poultry from a zinc-roofed atap house on the fringe of Clementi Road.

Today, the simple kampung-style eatery on stilts is still around, but gone are the chicken coops and the scatter of free-roaming birds. The menu has also expanded to include a wide mix of tze char offerings such as pipa duck, ginseng chicken soup, deep-fried cuttlefish balls as well as prawns cooked with butter, mango or black pepper – all of which, in our opinion, are sheer distractions.

After almost five decades, the moist, tender, succulent and unctuous morsels of parchment paper-wrapped fried chicken–steeped in a unique brew of rice wine, soya sauce and ginger–continues to be the star dish. Priced from $12 (for 10 parcels) to $58 (for 60 parcels), these zi bao ji are best enjoyed with a simple plate of blissfully-springy noodles ($3 each) tossed with heaps of sesame oil. And what better way to cut the grease then to end your meal with a pot of piping hot Chinese tea?

Rating: 3.5/5

MUST TRIES: Paper-wrapped fried chicken and noodles tossed with sesame oil

Union Farm Eating House

435A Clementi Road

Tel: 64662776

Opening hours: Tue-Fri: 11.45am-3pm, 5pm-9.15pm; Sat, Sun& PH: 11.45am-9.15pm

Evelyn Chen traded her near-solitaire frequent flyer miles from her jet setting corporate days for a critic’s pen, and has been eating, drinking and sleeping on the job ever since. She writes about food and travel and sits on the S.E.Asian judging panel of the San Pellegrino World 50 Best. Evelyn’s gourmet jaunts have been published in Conde Nast Traveller, Destin Asian and The Independent. Her article on Singapore’s fine dining scene won her the Mont Blanc Food Writer of the year award at the World Gourmet Summit in 2010.  

* inSing.com pays for the meals at the places we review.