PETALING JAYA, Oct 27 — Everyone’s got their local, beloved neighbourhood joint that they’ve been going to for years, decades, sometimes even generations.
Beyond the cherished dishes and memories, in time, these establishments can and often do become a pillar of the local community, standing firm as the neighbourhood changes around them.
Choong Kee Kampar Claypot Chicken Rice has been a cornerstone in Damansara Jaya for nearly three decades, during which time I’ve been lucky enough to grow up eating there.
It was 1996 when they first arrived; initially as a stall in Restoran 1188, a kopitiam still there today.
It stands at the end of the row of shops occupying Jalan SS22/25, a row along which Choong Kee has shifted over the years.
In 2009, they opened as a stand-alone shop, moving to the corner on the opposite end, before shifting to the current location in 2021.
Those familiar with Choong Kee will no doubt be familiar with Irene Heow, who runs the place with an iron grip and holds a perhaps slightly undeserved reputation for being icy and rather curt.
But when I visit on their day off, you wouldn’t know it.
I asked Heow how Choong Kee came to settle here, and she explained that while she and her husband both hail from Kampar, he had come to Kuala Lumpur to study and work in the construction industry.
After losing his job in the economic downturn in 1986, they returned to Kampar, where he ran a stall selling various types of bao, despite having no experience in anything F&B related.
There, he met a fellow hawker in the kopitiam who sold claypot chicken rice but planned to emigrate to Taiwan.
He decided to learn from that hawker, and spent months testing and modifying his recipe and technique, listening to customer feedback, tasting and picking up tips from other places famous for claypot chicken rice in Kampar.
In 1987, Heow joined her husband in running the business, and in 1988, Choong Kee officially came to be.
Thirty-five years and countless claypots later, their rice still hits the spot for many.
A small portion (enough for one) with salted fish and lap cheong (Chinese waxed sausage) added (RM18) has been my go-to order for over a decade, and it almost seems to taste better each and every time.
It arrives on your table so blistering hot it threatens to burn your tongue off, with a dollop of salted fish on the side of a melange of chicken pieces, cooked and caramelised in dark soy, slices of lap cheong and at the bottom, the star of the show, the rice.
It’s advised to get stuck in with a big spoon and mix it till everything is evenly coated and coloured, releasing the heady, intoxicating aroma of smoky charcoal and rice caramelised to the very edge of burnt, which fills up your lungs faster than you can inhale and ask for more.
With each spoonful of sticky, savoury and slightly sweet rice you inch closer and closer to the bottom, where the crispy pot of gold at the end of a very delicious rainbow lies: scorched rice.
Toasty, nutty and utterly delicious, the Spanish call it soccarat, from the bottom of paella; in Iran, tahdig is so prized there are eight different ways to prepare it; here, we call it fan ziu, and it is the best part of eating rice cooked this way in a clay pot, and I think one of the best mediums to illustrate the wonders of charcoal.
Choong Kee may not have a heartfelt story about a family recipe passed down the generations, but it is an often-overlooked story of necessity, perseverance and triumph, all of which form the beating heart of some of the best food in Malaysia and all around the world.
It’s a story that’s hinted at in the food: raging hot charcoal and worn and well-seasoned claypots are wrangled and wrestled together in an arduous, thoroughly unscientific cooking process that relies heavily on experience, muscle memory and a certain feel that no list of instructions, no matter how detailed, can replicate.
Restoran Choong Kee Kampar Claypot Rice
64, Jalan SS 22/25, Damansara Jaya, Petaling Jaya, Selangor
Open daily 11am-8pm, Closed on Wednesday
Tel: 017-871 7739
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