Penang:Wen Chang Hainan Chicken Rice

From Malaysia - Wiki Street Food

Click to enlarge

Hainanese chicken rice is a dish of Chinese origin most commonly associated with Malaysian cuisine or Singaporean cuisine. Based on history, this famous dish is originated from China Hainan(海南) Island. Anyway usually people in Hainan named this dish as Wen Chang(文昌) chicken. Nowadays, due to Chinese immigration to other countries, this dish has become popular in many countries, especially Malaysia and Singapore.

Within Malaysia Penang, the most authentic Hainanese chicken rice stall is definitely Wen Chang(文昌) chicken rice restaurant. In fact from the name of the restaurant already can tell that they emphasis on this. This stall was previously located a stone’s throw away from the Dumpling shop and has since made it big, relocating to this shop of their own.

From those many newspaper and magazine postings on the wall of this restaurant, further proven that it has received a lot of recognitions. By reading the postings, customer can even know more about the story behind this restaurant. Since Wen Chang(文昌) chicken rice restaurant is focusing in providing tradition Hainanese chicken rice, they only sell Hainanese chicken, roasted chicken, Lobak(卤肉), halogen Tao Fu(卤豆腐) and halogen egg(卤蛋).

Same like many other chicken rice stalls, customer is required to drop their order to the worker at the stall. Customer is also allowed to tell the worker that which part of chicken they prefer. If they order chicken drumstick, they can even request the worker to remove the chicken bone for them. Although most of the worker here communicate with each other in Hainan language, they can communicate in other languages too.

While talking about the taste of the food here, the roasted chicken taste just average. Probably due to the quality of roasted chicken is not stable. One way of making this dish better is by dipping the chicken with their secret recipe chili sauce. Other than chili sauce, they do have grinded ginger which is a nice complement to go with white chicken. Other than chicken, the Lobak, halogen Tao Fu or egg taste not bad. And most importantly it is consider quite cheap by ordering 2 sets of roasted chicken, Lobaks, halogen Tao Fu and eggs just cost around RM11.

Although the restaurant is not air-conditioned and it is crowded with customer during lunch time, it's clean and they serve the order quite fast. Overall, Wen Chang(文昌) chicken rice restaurant is an ordinary Hainanese chicken rice shop that provide fast service with consider cheap price.

Front view