‘It’s High Time We Had Halal Hainanese Chicken Rice At The Same Level As Big Boys Like Boon Tong Kee’ Says Rapper Sheikh Haikel - 8days Skip to main content

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‘It’s High Time We Had Halal Hainanese Chicken Rice At The Same Level As Big Boys Like Boon Tong Kee’ Says Rapper Sheikh Haikel

The celeb foodie has opened a halal chicken rice restaurant with his wife Anna Belle Francis. And he wants to play in the big leagues.

‘It’s High Time We Had Halal Hainanese Chicken Rice At The Same Level As Big Boys Like Boon Tong Kee’ Says Rapper Sheikh Haikel

The first time 48-year-old rapper Sheikh Haikel tried Hainanese chicken rice, his mind was blown. He tells 8days.sg: “When I was young, I had the chance to try chicken rice from a famous stall. Those were the days they only sold chicken rice, and didn’t have [pork] zi char dishes. My gosh! It just turned my world around. I was thinking about how there’s no pork in chicken rice, so I’m sure I can find somebody who can achieve the same [authentic] taste, but halal,” he excitedly shares. 

That somebody turned out to be him. He recently opened a legit Hainanese chicken rice eatery named Hai Ge Ji Hainanese Chicken Rice, a clever play on his name Haikel. He set up the 50-seater Bugis restaurant together with his celeb wife, Anna Belle Francis, 46, and five other business partners. 

The full-service eatery opened on 7 July 2024, and is the latest of the rapper’s F&B ventures - Sheikh also co-owns halal yakiniku joint Wakuwaku Yakiniku and the now-defunct burger joint, FatPapas. 

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Worked with a team of Chinese cooks 

To ensure that their dish remains true to taste, Sheikh and Anna Belle hired a team of four Chinese cooks, one of whom hails from Hainan, China, and another who worked at a “famous chicken rice chain” (they tell us which one off the record) in Singapore. 

“We wanted an authentic experience, and we can only replicate this if we work closely with our Chinese cooks,” Anna Belle explains. 

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