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Chicken Rice Balls in Malacca

Besides the famous ruins of what is remained of the A'Famosa Fort, Malacca is also famous for its chicken rice balls. Ask around any of your friends who originates from Malacca and I am sure that they would be able to name their favourite chicken rice balls stall. This one I had was near the town centre and it's along Jonker Street (or maybe a street or two away from it but it's around there). It is a restaurant at the corner of the street that specialises in chicken rice balls as evident by the huge cloth banner that screams "Malacca most famous chicken rice balls" *eyes rolling*. Yea yea yea, I know what some of you may be thinking right now: anything that advertises that outrightly is covering up for some inadequacies in their food. But heck, there was a queue of people lining up outside the shop waiting to get in, so how bad can it be right? So we wouldn't be the only gullible ones tricked by the banner.

The interior of the restaurant is quite unique, it is reminiscent of those eateries in the olden day China such as those typically shown in the "Once upon a time in China" series. There were heavy-duty square wooden tables and matching stools. The walls were painted a bright shade of red, either a sign of prosperity for the shop owners or to match the colors of all the great building nearby. Once seated, we got down to the business of ordering. Being the newbie that we are to this, we asked for the waitress's recommendations. She asked that we try their signature dish of assam fish to accompany the chicken rice that we would definitely be having (doh!). Being starved after a half day walking tour of all the historical buildings, we nodded our head in agreement.

The dishes arrived not long after and our first thoughts were: "the pieces of chicken looked really miserable" and "b..o..y, does that assam fish look nasty". Nevertheless, we dug into our rice balls enthusiastically, cutting the balls into halves and shoving them into our mouths. It tastes ... like normal rolled (or balled) up chicken rice to our disappointment oh well, what were we expecting? *sigh*. The chicken didn't taste any better than those we usually have at the kopitiam shop back in good old PeeJay. In fact, the boney and slightly bloodied state of the pieces of chicken kind of put me off. The pieces could have turned out better if the choppers (those that cut the chicken into million of tiny pieces) are expert hands at this. However, once we tasted the assam fish, it puts the smiles back on our faces. It is totally wicked!! Spicy and sourish, the gravy complements the rice well and also drowns out any unpleasant smell from the fish. The fish too were cooked just nice, its flesh is tender and most importantly, it is fresh. The added lady fingers are a nice touch to the dish as it takes some of the intensity off the taste. Overall, it was a good and satisfying meal. I think the cost for two person was about RM30, not bad considering we had both fish and chicken.

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