There is a grandmother behind this dish. Por Por, as the family called her, never worked in a restaurant. Her kitchen was a home kitchen, guided by instinct and repetition, and the recipes that came out of it have defined Sing Swee Kee since the restaurant opened on Seah Street in 2001. Twenty-five years later, that same kitchen is the foundation for something the family has never done before.
On 15 April 2026, Sing Swee Kee launches the Twin Phoenix Chicken Platter at S$32, billed as Singapore’s first chicken rice wrap experience. The format sounds simple enough: a shared platter of poached and roast chicken, a stack of thin crepe-like wraps, four house-made sauces, fresh cucumber, coriander, and a pile of chicken rice crispies. Diners assemble each bite themselves. But the thinking behind it is more considered than the description suggests.
Two Traditions, One Platter
The act of wrapping meat in a thin sheet and dressing it with sauces is one of the oldest shared dining rituals in the world. It appears across Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Middle Eastern tables, always organised around the same logic: communal, interactive, each bite calibrated to the diner’s own preference. Sing Swee Kee has taken this structure and applied it, somewhat audaciously, to Hainanese chicken rice.
The platter includes both chicken styles that define the restaurant’s identity. The poached chicken, silky and pale, is the version most closely associated with classic Singapore chicken rice. The roast chicken, lacquered and deeply savoury, offers a contrasting richness. Both are prepared using the same techniques the family has maintained for over two decades, unchanged from how they appear on the standard menu.
What is new is the assembly logic around them, and the sauces that make it work.
The Sauces Are the Heart of It
Sing Swee Kee spent months developing four sauces specifically for this format. Classic is the savoury chicken gravy that has always been spooned over the rice, now thickened slightly so it clings to a wrap rather than pooling beneath it. Mala introduces numbing heat, recommended as a bolder pairing for the poached chicken. Hoisin brings sweetness and depth, calibrated for the roast. Kecap manis, the Indonesian sweet soy, adds an umami-forward richness that anchors the wrap without overpowering it.
Each sauce has been adjusted in consistency for the specific demands of the format. Sauces that work over rice are too thin for a wrap. The kitchen identified this early and refined each recipe accordingly, aiming for the kind of cling that holds a bite together without making it heavy.
The Detail That Sets It Apart
The crispies deserve specific mention. Where most wrap formats reach for a generic cracker or fried shallot for texture, Sing Swee Kee makes theirs from actual chicken rice grains. The rice is cooked first with stock and aromatics, then fried until it shatters. The result carries the flavour of the dish it came from and adds a savoury crunch that generic toppings cannot replicate.
It is a small decision with a disproportionate effect. The crispies do not just add texture. They connect every wrap back to the dish that inspired the whole platter, anchoring the format in chicken rice rather than simply borrowing its proteins.
What Sing Swee Kee Is Not Doing
It is worth being clear about what the Twin Phoenix Chicken Platter is not. It is not a reinvention of chicken rice. The restaurant is not suggesting that wraps are a better way to eat it. The traditional plates, the poached chicken over fragrant rice with ginger paste and chilli, remain on the menu exactly as they have always been, alongside the Hainanese pork chop, the chap chye, the mutton soup. None of that has changed.
What the platter does is offer a different register for a dish that most Singaporeans know only one way. The interactive format makes it suited to a shared meal, to groups who want something to assemble together at the table. The four sauces mean no two wraps need to taste the same. It is an invitation to approach a familiar thing with fresh attention.
For a restaurant that has spent more than two decades keeping a grandmother’s recipes intact, that is not a small gesture.
Sing Swee Kee is at 34/35 Seah Street, open daily from 10.30am to 8.30pm, and at Funan Mall B2-11 from 9am to 8pm. Follow them at @singsweekee.sg.
