Nam Kee Chicken Rice – Lovely Old School Restaurant at Upper Thomson, Singapore

Nam Kee Chicken Rice at Upper Thomson Road was in the news recently. Selling a Lamborghini, taking a pay cut were sacrifices made by three brothers when the siblings took over their father’s chicken rice business.

Traditional Chicken Rice Restaurant at Upper Thomson Road

We were pleasantly surprised by the old yet pristine condition of Nam Kee. It has the traditional coffee shop tables and chairs as well as some booth seats. The walls are fully lined with glossy ceramic tiles. The entire place is brightly lit by rows of fluorescent lights (or their LED lookalikes).

With a history dating back to 1968, Nam Kee Chicken Rice Restaurant is a family-run business. It is now managed and run by the 3rd generation.

Remember Yet Con Restaurant?

This old school chicken rice restaurant brings to mind another one like it – Yet Con Restaurant (群逸) at Purvis Street. Sadly, that has closed down. Fortunately we had visited it in 2020 and you can read about it in our post. If you compare the pictures of the two restaurants, they look amazingly similar. The tables and chairs, the restaurant layout and colour scheme. Looks like they were designed by the same decorator. Even the orange Coinafon (remember these 10cent public phones) is a standard feature at both of them. If you miss Yet Con, perhaps you can check out Nam Kee Chicken Rice.

Nam Kee Chicken Rice Restaurant Menu

Here are pictures of the Nam Kee Restaurant menu. They serve more than just chicken rice. In fact it looks like a tze char restaurant as well – with items such as Curry Fish Head, Hainanese Pork Chop and Mapo Tofu on the menu.

Our Nam Kee Chicken Rice Lunch

We had our chicken rice lunch with a couple of side dishes – fried eggs with bitter gourd and dumpling soup.

For our chicken rice, we elected to have the Hainanese roast chicken ($16 for half chicken). Being served with a drizzle of light gravy, the skin was not crisp, but still harboured a mild roasted flavour. It was nicely cooked with most parts of the meat nice and juicy. We were happy with the chicken but less so with the rice which we would have liked to have a bit more of the chicken rice fragrance.

We enjoyed the dumpling soup ($6 for small portion) as well. A very light broth with a few dumplings can break the heaviness of chicken rice.

Our final dish was fried bitter gourd and eggs. Mainly because it has been so long since we ate bitter gourd which is sometimes said to be good for health. The bitter gourd had a good balance of softness and still retaining some of its bitter taste. We are happy to order this again.

The Coinafon

This is the orange coinafon (or coinaphone) we referred to. Yet Con also had one like this. I think it is only for display and not working as I did not see a cord attached to it. Anyway, it was a nice nostalgic lunch at Nam Kee Chicken Rice Lunch. We will certainly be back to try the other dishes. The Hainanese pork chop is on the short list as the shop is run by a Hainanese family. P.S. Do not confuse them with Wee Nam Kee – another famous chicken rice restaurant in Singapore.

Ratings:
Food: 3
Service: 3
Value: 4
Atmosphere: 4
Overall Rating: 3 TOPs

Nam Kee Chicken Rice & Restaurant
201 Upper Thomson Road, Singapore 574343

Tel: +65 9637 9168

Opening Hours: 11:15 am – 8:30 pm

Website

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The Ordinary Patrons | Real Dining Experience of Ordinary People
an independent Singapore food blog