You’re probably familiar with chicken rice, a local specialty in Malaysia and Singapore, in which boiled or roasted chicken is served with chicken-infused rice, typically with chili sauce on the side.
You might not be familiar with chicken rice balls, however (I certainly wasn’t until I came to Melaka); it’s basically the same dish, but with the rice rolled up into Timbit-sized balls.
There are a bunch of places that serve this in Melaka, but I went to Famosa Chicken Rice Ball, one of the more popular restaurants to serve the dish.
It’s not bad. The balls are interesting — they’re dense enough to easily hold together (even if you dip them in sauce), but not nearly as thick and chewy as something like glutinous rice. They have a pronounced chicken-infused flavour. They’re quite tasty.
The chicken itself wasn’t bad, but it definitely wasn’t up there with the better chicken rice that I’ve had. The flavour was quite nice, but it lacked the luxuriously soft and tender texture that typifies the best of this dish. The white meat, in particular, was actually quite tough.
The chili sauce, too, was a bit of a letdown. It was fine, with a decent amount of kick, but the flavour was a bit thin.
Still, those rice balls were unique enough that this is definitely worth trying.
Location: 21, Jalan Hang Jebat, 75200 Melaka, Malaysia
How to find it: It’s right near Jonker Street.