Malaysia Food Review: Chicken Rice Balls in Malacca

Last year, we went to Malacca. It is such an awesome place. We stayed pretty much in the China Town/Heritage area. I love all the nice Chinese-style shophouses. Melaka (same pronunciation but that’s how it’s spelled in Malay, so not much point going to Malaysia and spell it as Malacca). Melaka heritage area is well known for their Peranakan culture and their foods. I’m going to talk about a Malaysian/Singaporean staple, the Chicken Rice.

Chicken rice is basically rice that has been cooked in chicken stock topped with either Chinese-style roast chicken (red) or boiled chicken (white) and some sauce made from soy sauce and chicken/sesame oil. And then of course, you have pork rice which comes with either barbecued pork (or char-siu which is made from loin marinated with Chinese-style barbecue sauce) or roast pork (which is pork belly with crispy rind).

So what is so special about this chicken rice, you ask? They are balls, of course! It’s just the normal rice that has been cooked in chicken stock with a bit mushier consistency and made into balls. I can tell you right now, normal chicken rice is much nicer. But apparently, that’s a touristy thing to eat. So we did.

Restoran Famosa in Melaka

This place is pretty elaborate actually. It’s practically a museum in itself. I recommend just going into for a normal chicken rice (which is rather nice) just to see how elaborate they sell this whole Peranakan culture.

They also have other things on the menu. We ordered the won ton soup – which wasn’t all that great.

All in all, this place’s food is rather average (good chicken rice places in Malaysia are a dime a dozen) but +10 for all its tourist kitschiness.