'Are they selling an entire chicken?': Singapore-based hawkers react to the $17 chicken rice being sold in New York City's new food center

• Chicken rice is a staple dish in Singapore, and it typically costs around $2.30 a plate.
• But in New York City, the dish can cost up to $17.

Chicken rice, widely regarded as Singapore's national dish, is known for being delicious and affordable. At a hawker center, or open-air food stall, a plate of poached chicken and fragrant rice will set you back 3.35 Singapore dollars, or $2.30, according to the data company CEIC.

But if you're craving chicken rice in New York City, get ready to pay.

Urban Hawker, a newly launched food center on Manhattan's West 50 Street, offers a variety of Singaporean foods. Among those is chicken rice — and it costs $17 a plate.

The eatery opened to the public on September 28 and served as many as 500 orders of chicken rice a day, Bloomberg reported. But Insider spoke to several Singapore-based hawkers who sell chicken rice, many of whom said they were shocked by how much Singaporean dishes cost overseas.

One local, who only wanted to be known as Tan, works at a chicken rice stall in a food court in eastern Singapore. Tan said it would be "impossible" to charge NYC prices for the dish in Singapore.

"Singaporeans don't want these prices. If you make it more expensive, people will say you are robbing them," Tan said.

Tan added that chicken-rice stalls that price their dishes above SG$4 typically target tourists.

Despite rising food costs in Singapore, many hawkers in the city-state have fought to keep prices low for local diners. As Insider previously reported, the cost of ingredients has increased by up to 50% in the city-state because of COVID-19, the supply-chain crisis, and the war in Ukraine.

"Prices are becoming crazier, and everything has increased. But try selling chicken rice for more than $4, and people will complain," Tan added.

Sky Wu, a Malaysian who manages several chicken-rice stalls for UTaste, a local coffee shop, thinks the dish might be so expensive because food and beverage workers are generally paid more in New York than they are in Singapore.

Food and beverage assistants in Singapore typically earn an average of SG$1,945 a month, according to employment site Indeed. Food and beverage assistants in New York City, meanwhile, are paid on average almost $4,500 monthly, per Indeed. Prawnaholic Collections, one of the stalls at Urban Hawker, made headlines in Singapore for paying kitchen assistants a monthly salary of $5,000, per local news site Lianhe Zhaobao.

Above all, the reaction among Singapore hawkers to the New York City prices was one of perplexity.

"Are they selling an entire chicken?" Wu said. "For one plate of a few strips of chicken and simple rice, that's so expensive."