Jollibee Singapore Thrice in One Day {Foodee}

Filipino Food Friday is upon us once again and I am happy to say that I have finally been able to visit the much hyped about Jollibee Singapore. Thrice. In one day.

I know, I know. Let me explain.

Now as I had mentioned previously, Jollibee is the most popular fast food chain in the Philippines and they recently opened a branch in Singapore.

The Filipinos based here got so excited about it that they visited it in droves, resulting in hour-long queues. Rumor has it that it even took as much as three hours. Of course that’s just hearsay, so I cannot vouch for the veracity of that claim. I have lots of friends who said they had to wait for an hour, though.

The crowd in the separate queueing room

When Gelle read my blog about getting to eat Jollibee takeaway, she said, “Waaahhh. I envy you. I so wanna go.”

So I said, “Then let’s go! How about this Saturday?”

I know I said I wasn’t willing to queue, but when a friend needs me, I am there. Haha.

I guess I also wanted to know how it felt like to actually be in the restaurant itself, as well as try the other stuff on their menu. So far I had only tried the burger steak and spaghetti, and I was quite happy with them.

Jollibee burger steak and spaghetti in takeaway boxes

So we decided to go before noon, hoping that people weren’t early birds and therefore it wouldn’t be too crowded yet. This was last Saturday, by the way.

Gelle arrived before me and said she’d start queuing already. I was pretty confident that I’d arrive in time to join in her in the queue but to my surprise, 15 minutes later, she was already calling me to ask what my order was because it was already her turn. What???

I was so shocked that I didn’t even know what to order. I ended up ordering everything. Okay, not everything, but a lot – chicken, spaghetti, burger. All the fixings of a child’s party meal. Eeps.

“Our order’s here!” Gelle texted me a while later. “I’ll start eating this one chicken, okay?” Haha so cute of her to inform me.

“Of course, go ahead!” I texted back. “I’ve just reached Orchard.” This was the MRT station where you get off to walk to Lucky Plaza, where Jollibee occupies the sixth floor.

Moments later, I entered through the side door marked “EXIT ONLY” (coz I’m so badass like that) and started searching for Gelle amidst the surprisingly sparsely populated restaurant.

When I spotted her I excitedly yelled, “Gelle!” She uncharacteristically just stared back at me, not returning my greeting, so intent on eating her chicken joy (that’s the official name of Jollibee’s fried chicken). Seriously she did NOT talk to me for like the first five minutes.

Finally while I was busy taking pictures of the food and the surroundings (I was hungry too, I hadn’t eaten any breakfast, but as any blogger worth her salt knows, documentation is the first priority!), she emitted her first words: “SO YUMMY!”

Gelle’s joy over Chicken Joy

She then proceeded to talk, telling me that she normally just ordered 1-piece chicken joy but the smell of the frying chicken wafted over to the queue and made her mouth water so that she couldn’t help but order the 2-piece meal.

“Did you know they conducted a taste test in which it was concluded that Jollibee is the best tasting fried chicken in Singapore?” she informed me.

Well I didn’t know this, so I thanked her through a mouthful of sweet spaghetti.

Yes, sweet. Filipino spaghetti has sugar in it.

As we ate, we marveled at how there were so many empty chairs in the restaurant and wondered where everyone was. “Probably still asleep,” I hypothesized.

Chicken Joy and Langhap Sarap Spaghetti

“What time are you voting?” she asked as I finished off the dregs of the hot fudge sundae that she generously shared with me after declaring that it was so delicious and creamy.

“3pm,” I replied. “So there’s still time. Wanna look around?”

She nodded, so I stashed my burger into my bag and we walked through Orchard’s malls – Lucky Plaza, Ion, Ngee Ann City.

We ended up buying some beauty products on 50% sale and trying out some macarons at the newly opened Laduree branch – stuff for another blog.

“This is such a happy day!” Gelle proclaimed gleefully.

Just then, her hubby texted. He was off work and headed to Orchard to meet her. Where would he like to eat? She asked. I’m sure you know what the answer was.

And that was how, for the second time that day, I once again found myself in Jollibee.

This time I tried to be a good girl and joined the queue outside – there were about 5 people – but before I could even reach the end of the queue, they had started letting these people in, so that I ended up running after the tail end of the queue.

Gelle and I decided to go look for a table while Joey placed his order. I also asked him to buy a bucket of chicken for my friends Yves and Betchie whom I was meeting later on.

The restaurant was full this time so that Gelle and I had a hard time finding a table. After around 5 minutes of searching, I caught a family vacating a table and immediately slid into the booth.

Joey arrived soon after, he queued less than 15 minutes only. His order was also chicken joy and it smelled so good that it made me hungry again. So I took out my yum burger with TLC (tomato, lettuce, cheese) and ate it. Haha.

It tasted just as good as I remember it. This is actually my favorite from Jollibee, by the way, because I’m not really a fan of Jollibee’s crispylicious, juicylicious chicken joy. And there you go – my guilty confession!

Joey’s Chicken Joy

Me and Gelle

After that I went downstairs to wait for Yves and Betchie’s cab to pick me up and bring the three of us to the Philippine embassy where we went to vote.

After we were done, you know what happened next. That’s right, they decided they wanted to try Jollibee for the first time too, and that’s how I ended up in there for the third time that day.

This time there was no queue outside at all. I ordered takeaway burgers for my flatmates, and a Jolly hotdog meal and hot fudge sundae for myself. The meal came with french fries and drinks.

I was still full from my two meals earlier, so I just ate the fries and sundae. I have always loved Jollibee fries because of their crispy coating, and they have the same formula here. Yay!

Betchie and Yves and the panic buying that ensued

Jolly Hotdog with crispy fries

Hot fudge sundae

Betchie, unlike Gelle, was not that impressed with the chicken. “The chicken is like normal Singapore chicken – too fat,” she pointed out.

Yves was okay with the chicken, though, adding, “Did you know that there was a blind taste test conducted on Singapore fried chicken and Jollibee emerged as the winner?”

Why as a matter of fact I know that, don’t I?

Where is this bloody article and why does everyone seem to know about it but me??

Later that night after I got home, I had the Jolly hotdog for dinner. It tasted as good as I remembered it too!

And that was it, with that last meal, I had officially tasted everything on the Jollibee Singapore menu. Yay me? Haha. What a weird achievement.

When I told my friend Mildred about this funny adventure, she said: “Waaahhh. I envy you. I so wanna go.”

So I said, “Then let’s go! How about this Saturday?”

Uh oh.

Jolly Dee with Jollibee

P.S. I finally looked for that chicken taste test article. It can be found here. Turns out it was just six people who conducted the test and made the rankings. I was under the impression that there was a bigger group involved, haha!