There are nasi lemak and there IS nasi lemak ..it’s exclusively a Malay thingy by which you must differentiate what indeed is a Malay thingy ...in the broad spectrum of Nusantara or Malay archipelago , The Riau region is termed exclusively Malay , which encompasses greater part of south and east peninsular Malaya including Sinkie and the province on Sumatra whose capital is Pekanbaru , hence the origin of Nasi lemak which came into being by the very existence of coconut growth in the sandy shores
so , to have a nasi lemak , there must be sandy shores and coconut to begin with , not to mention the wet padi cultivation , without all these factors no such thing as nasi lemak ..ah ! I do forget the sea and it’s fishes
nasi lemak was so developed , I speculate , as a travel food ...something portable that you can carry with you ...and than the chilly without which there cannot be a nasi lemak too but chilly itself was absent in Malay culture and terrain and it was an introduction by the kelings , so how they eventually got married is beyond me
I had rated several regional versions of nasi lemak and there are subtle differences ..for example the peninsular and sinki version of the chilli comes across sweet but the Sumatran version is quite like the kelings chilli without much or total absence of sugar ...than the rice used , almost all were design to use local grown padi , and that itself can make huge difference in taste ...but today most peninsular and sinki version goes with Thai rice and lately the Indian grown Basmati rice , Long grain used for Nasi Briyani ,
than the chink version of nasi lemak , mainly to cater to the chinks taste buds of fried dead meat , frankly it stinks