The Best Chinese Ginger Chicken I Have Ever Had.

I stood there lost in thought at Bukit Bintang.  I was divided about whether to board the metro to Pudu or to scrap the plan altogether. Twenty two hours earlier, I had tried to make the very same journey. My efforts had sloshed down the drainpipe because I had missed lunch time and the doors were shut. Today would be my second attempt.

The metro on the opposite side rattled up to the platform, drowning my thoughts out until it heaved to a stop.

But a part of me was tired, tired of walking about in lost tourist circles around an unknown city. Tired of clutching onto a DSLR boulder that needed to be guarded ever so closely on the pickpocket-powered metro lines.

An alley in Pudu, Kuala Lumpur. I probably criss-crossed it at least three times before managing to walk in the right direction.

The doors slid shut and the metro on the other side roared off, leaving me to my own mental turbulence.

Another part of me was nervous, afraid, because I had finally managed to pull up Robyn Eckhardt’s review on my blackberry. Her post warned that not one person at this legendary haunt spoke English. I would be the fumbling outsider who attracts all the wrong, mocking attention of every server. I’d be that ignoramus with outrageously sloppy sign language skills, made doubly pathetic because the place didn’t have any menus that could be pointed at. Regulars just knew what they wanted, and newcomers…well they be damned if they don’t speak Cantonese.

I could hear the rumble of the approaching train, screeching at me to make a decision.

And then the residual part of me, the stubborn one-third, stuck its fingers in its ears to mute out the other two rational parts of my brain. It cackled mockingly at me for even considering the thought of turning back from a place that Robyn Eckhardt, one of the most famous food writers of Asia, had commanded me to visit. If I boarded the metro back to my hotel, I’d officially be the sorriest excuse of a food explorer that had ever made her way to Kuala Lumpur.

The doors slid open with a questioning look, are you in, or are you out?

That final one-third convinced me. Ego usually trumps all else. I was going, even if I had to crawl in on all fatigued fours and get thrown a plate of unrecognizable creepy crawlies because my sign language had inadvertently translated into an order of squishy wanton worms. I left reason at the platform and bravely boarded the metro to Pudu, the home of one the oldest, and most renowned Chinese restaurants in Kuala Lumpur, Sek Yuen.

Sek Yuen's air-conditioned dining area, complete with linen-covered round tables that are good for large group dinners

Sek Yuen had planted itself in Pudu, Kuala Lumpur, a few years after World War II. The informal canteen-style shack was their first outpost, before they unveiled an air-conditioned, tablecloth-lined dining room in the adjacent building. What’s remarkable is that, according to a local blogger Vkeong, their kitchen still labours on wood fire, decades behind the convenience of gas and electric burners.

Sek Yuen's first dining area. Informal, sans table cloths, and no AC.

Generations of chefs and the art of delicate and thoughtful manual cooking techniques lay preserved in black and white photographs framed on the walls. This place had a past, it had heritage, it even had its own memories. The air in the old shack traced my heart with the eerie, mysterious fingers of history that often reach out to me when I visit a monument.

If there were concerns about how I would communicate with the servers and whether they would mock me and discriminate against me and shovel the creepiest of crawlies into my food, they all vanished when one of the wiry thin servers flashed a smile at me. That gesture of warmth unleashed a new sense of hope in me, and I toiled enthusiastically to communicate my order. There were questions in English, answers in Cantonese mixed with broken English, air-drawn gestures of soup and stir-fry, and last minute attempts to extract Cantonese words from Google on my phone. A flurry of words and gestures later, I believe we had settled on the ginger chicken.

The chicken arrived on a raised, stainless steel plate, with a stainless steel bowl of rice and an empty orange plastic bowl where I could mix the two. When I left the restaurant, the steel plate that once held the ginger chicken was spanking clean. My message out to the world of social media read: Sek Yuen: Mindblowing is an understatement.

My entire meal went by feeling completely intoxicated by the most exquisitely fragrant ginger chicken I had ever tasted in my life. And also, terribly anxious that what I was eating was not really chicken all. This was potentially a meat that I was religiously forbidden to eat, pork. Chicken just didn’t have the potential to taste this good.

Chicken also never looked like that before. My stainless steel plate bore plump tender knuckles of meat, covered in a slippery skin that closely resembled oxtail. Every bone bore a thick swab of juicy pink meat, the kind that looked suspiciously similar to the roast pork dishes I’ve seen over a lifetime of abstinence. My attempts at confirming and re-confirming with the servers just couldn’t reassure me. After all, how would you communicate chicken over sign language without making a complete and utter fool of yourself in public?

It was nerve-wracking, but I couldn’t stop myself. My chopsticks were locked into a hypnotic trance, completely undone by a silky ginger sauce which was so incredibly fresh that every time I tasted it, I felt like I was tasting spring again. The culinary hands behind this dish were using the sauce to lure me into a sensory farm with the choicest of ginger, the most vibrant sprigs of cilantro, and an occasional crunchy bamboo shoot. This dish wasn’t just a meal, it was a journey back into time where vegetables may have looked less polished and homogenous, yet captured the taste of nature that feels elusive today.

I rarely touch the rice that accompanies any dish. I usually favour the bread basket. And if there’s no bread, I’ll still skip the rice. But at Sek Yuen, I realized that the hot grains would be my only hope of wiping up every last drop of the hazelnut-hued pool of ginger sauce that had accumulated at the bottom of the plate. And I obliged, mesmerized with a sauce that was making me eat rice and potentially, if that chicken turned out to not be chicken after all, condemning me to my own religious hell.

I left Sek Yuen completely overwhelmed by an experience that I had nearly walked away from just a few hours earlier. As the metro screeched to a halt at the platform, my feet mechanically stepped forward towards the sliding doors. But my senses were still lingering in a shack a mile away, where I had just discovered one of the most incredible Chinese meals of my life.

[It was only after I saw a photograph of the same exact dish on a flickr album covering Sek Yuen yesterday, that I can confirm, months after the fact, that the dish was indeed chicken.]

Restoran Sek Yuen
315 Jalan Pudu,
Pudu, 55100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Phone: +(606) 3 9222-0903, +(606) 3 9222-9457

Author: InaFryingPan

With a family legacy of ingenious cooks, a nutritionist and chef-extraordinaire mother, and a father who introduced me to steak and caviar when I could barely reach the table, I had no choice but to acquire a keen awareness of food during my childhood years in Dubai. But it was only after I found myself on a college campus in Philadelphia – far away from home, too cheap as a student to spend on anything other than pizza, and with dorm rooms that had little rat-holes of kitchens if they even had them at all – when I developed a heightened appreciation of food. An appreciation of food that I once ate every night at the dinner table in Dubai, but that was now an entire ocean away. I lusted for the culinary treasures that lay outside the stale walls of my college dining hall, hijacked friends’ kitchens to try my hand at something, anything , remotely edible, and greedily raided different websites in search of highly-rated restaurants. With my move to New York to work for a consulting firm that secretly harbored self-professed foodies, my appreciation transformed into a passion, an addicition. I felt like everyone around me in New York was talking about food: where to get the best cupcakes, pizza slices, banh mi, kati rolls, pho, fried chicken, and every other food item out there that is just a plain old dish in some part of the world, but that’s become hyped to unforeseen proportions in New York. What fuelled my addiction over time was travel to different cities, both for work and play, which gave me unfettered access to the culinary havens of not only New York, but also of DC, Virginia, Chicago, Houston, Vegas, Austin, Seattle and even a little city called Bentonville (Arkansas!). After 9 years away from home, I’ve finally taken the leap to come back to Dubai – with not just an awareness, but genuine appreciation and passionate addiction for what I’d taken for granted as a child. Mom, I’m back to reclaim my seat at your dinner table, and to rediscover this city with its ever-expanding menu of international flavors.

18 thoughts on “The Best Chinese Ginger Chicken I Have Ever Had.

  1. Holly Warah says:

    Sounds delicious & looks delicious! Lovely photographs. Can I tag along next time?

    Reply
  2. Holly Warah says:

    Sounds delicious & looks delicious! Lovely photographs. Can I tag along next time?

    Reply
    1. inafryingpan says:

      @google-55e11dd3911b100c4276886a0023288d:disqus – you betcha! I’m always looking for fellow eager eaters :D

  3. Tasmeea says:

    Looks delicious, and I understand your troubles with communication as I spent 6 years living in Malaysia as a child! From what I can recall, chicken is known as ’Ayam’ in Malay.

    Reply
    1. inafryingpan says:

      @2edf50dab52f74c3212ce1233b6abed0:disqus – oh lucky you!! I doubt anyone at Sek Yuen spoke Malay, it was an all-Cantonese crew. But I do love a good curry ayam ;)

    1. InaFryingPan says:

      @daddybird – do let me know if you get a chance to visit, and get their peking duck if you have a large group!

    2. inafryingpan says:

      @DaddyBird:disqus  – do let me know if you get a chance to visit, and get their peking duck if you have a large group!

    1. inafryingpan says:

      @theblackpeppercorn:disqus – thank you, that’s incredibly gracious of you :)

  4. nadia says:

    You just took me to Pudu with you with your awesome narration and gorgeous pictures! Too bad I couldn’t taste the chicken, but I trust you when you say it’s the best :)

    Hubby and I are planning to visit Malaysia later this year, but he is very strict with regards to whether or not the meat is halal, so I doubt we’ll ever dine at Sek Yuen :(

    Reply
    1. inafryingpan says:

      @5648dc968b288637253f0e06207d3751:disqus – don’t worry, there are tons of incredible halal eats too! ping me before you go, I will give you my foodie resources ;) 
      [ps check out eatingasia’s blog, eatingasia.typepad.com, it’s got the best eats in KL and Penang.]

  5. Ishitaunblogged says:

    Sizzler, your writing is well – if I may borrow some sentences from your own post puts me into a ’hypnotic trance… so
    incredibly fresh that every time I tasted it, I felt like I was tasting
    spring again’

    I see your and some of my fav bloggers’ posts pop up in Fooderati Arabia site – but I know that till I go through them at my own leisure – savouring each word and line – it will not do justice to the effort one has taken. Of all the posts I have read of yours – the writing style in this one is, well absolutely vivid and lyrical. I could visualise you in your dilemna behind the sliding doors of the metro (I was inside the metro) and your sign language which could have ended up ordering that squishy worm wanton:)

    Reply
    1. inafryingpan says:

      @5e8c32b20f4724711dd3c80c2633f364:disqus – awwwwww. I am speechless. You maketh my day love, you maketh my day. Thank you!

  6. Saleem says:

    Seeing the photographs and the write up makes one want more even with stomach full. Wish you take me on some of your food tours

    Reply
    1. inafryingpan says:

      @9a1d510f1be63443c618f7d241d72ab2:disqus – you, dearest daddy, will be the Chief Guest on my tours! :D

  7. Anita Menon says:

    The food looks so delicious. I have been craving some chinese off late. Here in Bahrain, HongKOng is a restaurant that serves the most amazing  chinese food. This post inspires me to head to the nearest chinese joint asap. 

    Reply
    1. inafryingpan says:

      @openid-77086:disqus – so the big question, 6 days later, is: have you headed to the nearest chinese joint yet or not? ;)

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