A Misunderstood Malaysia National Dish - Chicken Chop

Malaysia just celebrated its 60th birthday yesterday. 60 might not be significant to many but it is to Chinese. By tradition, Chinese only celebrates birthday from 60 years old onwards. 60 is an important point in life because if you live until 60, you have lived through a full cycle of Chinese calendar. Through these 60 years, I thought : what connects Malaysians better than anything else? Food. Therefore in honour of our 60th Hari Merdeka (Independence Day), I would like to inaugurate one very-well known dish but we often don't relate it to Malaysia, as part of the diverse Malaysian cuisine -- chicken chop.

We Malaysians disagree on many things but when it comes to food, nobody argues. We love our food, we are proud of our food. When asked what a Malaysian misses the most about Malaysia while traveling abroad, food is almost always the answer. Talking about Malaysian food, nasi lemak, roti canai, bak kut teh, laksa, rojak, etc. are the typical examples that pops up in people's mind. But who would have thought that chicken chop is actually Malaysian.

The obvious reason why we never think of chicken chop as Malaysian is because it is labeled as Western food. This labeling is so deeply rooted that here in Malaysia, chicken chop is the synonym of Western food. Together with fish and chips and burgers, they became the representation of the entire Western cuisine. During my years in France, my grandma always worried about what I ate. She always asked me if I ate chicken chop and burgers everyday with a look of concern. This just shows that chicken chop has became a stereotype of ang mo. 

"I grew up automatically linking Western cuisine with chicken chop, then fish and chips, then steak, then lamb, then pasta. It wasn't till I was much older when I realized that hey, no one outside of Malaysia or Singapore knows what the heck a chicken chop is! It is not even to be found on Wikipedia!!!"   -- suanie --

Chicken chop has its root from Hainanese immigrants and our British colonial past. Under British ruling, Hainanese owned many kopitiams and British preferred meat and potatoes, so there born chicken chop served in kopitiams. That is why I always correct people when they call chicken chop as Western food. It should have been classified as Malaysian Hainanese food.

"Despite the British inspiration, it's difficult to track down the chicken chop in Western countries - or indeed in China. ... It was purely created to cater to the target audience, in this case, the Mat Sallehs."   -- Poskod --

To me, one prominent feature of chicken chop that separates itself from other chicken steak from the West is the sauce, or should I say over-abundance of sauce. The stress is on the over-abundance and not the sauce because the authentic chicken chop, the real deal, is flooded with some kind of sauce, whether it is mushroom sauce, onion gravy, or black pepper sauce.

I notice this important feature of chicken chop through my dad. I introduced to him many European dishes while we were traveling in Europe a few years back. One complain about the food kept coming back : the dishes were too dry. Not until I find out what so special about the local chicken chop do I understand the complain. Like my grandma, my dad's mental image of Western food is still stuck at chicken chop. So he instinctively assumes every Western dish should be the same, drenched with sauce.

Don't call chicken chop as Western food anymore. Its root is here, here in Malaysia. It represents our British colonial past, an evolving artifact of our history. It should be mentioned together with nasi lemak and peers as Malaysian cuisine.