a little bit of background.
Yut Kee on a Saturday morning is a blend of chaos and restlessness as customers linger outside the 84-year old Hainanese coffee shop, waiting for a table. This is how it usually works: You surrender your name at the counter and much like a bank, your turn is called chronologically. When you finally get a table, you’ll most likely be sharing it with a noisy family or a pair of teenage lovebirds.
Once the food hits the table, however, the initial stress becomes worthwhile. Yut Kee’s pièce de résistance is the chicken chop, a preserved recipe from 1928 consisting of a slab of deep fried chicken drenched in rich caramel-coloured onion gravy. The chicken is consistently well-battered and is served with a wholesome side of potatoes, carrots and peas. A tinge of Worcestershire sauce gives the gravy a subtle lift, which tastes sublime slathered over the crispy chicken.
While Yut Kee’s chicken chop is one of the more famous in the Klang Valley, they are not the only purveyors of the dish, widely known as “Hainanese chicken chop.” But how exactly did chicken chop in an onion gravy become a Hainanese speciality?
Hainanese communities first migrated to Malaysia from the Chinese island of Hainan in the mid-19th century. Although they form only a small Chinese diaspora in Malaysia, their kopitiams soon spread their distinctive cooking style through the country. Many of the Hainanese cooks and coffee shop operators were under the service of the British colonial masters, and since meat and potatoes were popular mealtime options for the British, the Hainanese chicken chop was born: a fusion of both Chinese and Western flavours.
Despite the British inspiration, it’s difficult to track down the chicken chop in Western countries – or indeed in China. So can we call it a national creation? Like nasi lemak or roti canai, can the Hainanese chicken chop be deemed authentically Malaysian?
When Mervyn travelled to Qionghai, Hainan, he failed to find the chicken chop or anyone who knew about its existence
Mervyn Lee, the diligent 33-year grandson of Yut Kee who currently runs the shop, assures me that the chicken chop is as authentic as our Protons. “For what it’s worth, Hainanese chicken chop is definitely a Malaysian thing. You will not eat this in Hainan either,” he says. When Mervyn travelled to Qionghai, Hainan, five years ago to visit his ancestral home, he failed to find the chicken chop or anyone who knew about its existence. “It was purely created to cater to the target audience, in this case, the Mat Salleh
