More for less at TCRS
No, not Tasty Chinese Rabbit Soup.
If you live in Malaysia or you’ve at least spent a few weeks there, you will know all too well that this stands for The Chicken Rice Shop, and that there are nearly as many of these in the country as there are chickens.
What a generic, uninspiring name for a franchise!
My husband Bryn normally steers clear of such places, preferring to get his lunch from local family run businesses.
But he is more than happy to make an exception for TCRS.
Bryn is certainly a regular customer – he pretty much ends up here whenever he can’t decide where to go – as is our son Berry who can’t get enough of it either.
They have been here together countless times, and of course I often go along too.
Chicken and rice might just be the safest combination of ingredients imaginable. What can possibly go wrong?
Everybody loves chicken and everybody loves rice so the extraordinary success of TCRS should hardly come as a surprise.
Although there are various starters, side dishes, vegetables and plenty of extra bonus items on the menu, if you are coming to TCRS you are most likely going to be sampling the chicken….. and the rice. So let’s start with the chicken and then move on to the rice.
The Chicken
With the chicken, you have a couple of essential choices to make. Firstly, how do you want your chicken done?
Here you can choose between five different styles: Hainanese steamed, crispy roast, soy sauce, “prime honey bbq” and Hainanese curry.
And then you need to decide whether you would breast, leg, drumstick, or a quarter/half/whole bird.
If you go for a whole chicken you do get it very slightly cheaper but then you will probably only get to try one of the cooking styles.
Typically we will order at least a couple of different types between us so we tend to go for individual portions.
Personally, I love their Hainanese steamed chicken breast, which has to be one of the most succulent, moist, juicy chicken breasts I have ever had the fortune to experience.
Chicken breast can sometimes be rather dry and tasteless in Europe and other parts of the Western world, but the Chinese really know how to cook it, don’t they?
The Rice
Now for the rice, you don’t really have much choice.
You get what you are given.
But you will not be disappointed.
I remember watching a documentary when I first came to Malaysia dedicated to chicken rice rice.
Not to chicken rice, but specifically chicken rice rice!
At the time we were surprised that someone had bothered to put together an hour-long study of chicken rice rice and naturally wondered what all the fuss was about.
It turns out that for Malaysians the rice component is equally as important as the chicken component and if you’re planning to run a successful chicken rice enterprise you better get the rice right!
No two establishments will serve up quite the same rice, and all too often it is subtle differences in the seasoning that make the difference and have customers either coming back for more or going elsewhere.
All chicken rice rice does have in common, however, the fact that it is cooked in chicken broth, giving it a really satisfying savory aroma that makes it stand out from other types of rice.
TCRS rice is lovely and aromatic, a bit yellow but not too yellow, and perfectly complements the chicken, especially when mixed with a splash of chilli sauce which we will come to next!
The sauce and the soup
You guessed it, the sauce is as critical as the chicken and the rice. There are 2 signature TCRS sauces – the chilli sauce and the ginger sauce. Both are made in-house with fresh ingredients, not out of a bottle!
Even Bryn likes them, and it is pretty difficult to convince Bryn to pour sauce onto anything.
They come in a tiny little plastic dish, barely enough for one or two mouthfuls of rice, so as you have probably come to expect by now, we always make sure to ask for extra sauce. Just try not to waste any if you do this.
If I’ve got some left over when I’ve finished my chicken rice, no worries. I just drink it down as if it were a nice cool glass of iced tea. Delicious.
Finally the soup. Everybody gets a small bowl of soup with their order – probably the same broth that the rice was cooked in? – which is a nice touch and can be quite satisfying, especially if you are lucky enough to get a couple of chunks of radish in it.
Some people pour part of this over their rice but I like to have it separately. Up to you!
So if you haven’t already (which is probably quite unlikely), be sure to give TCRS a try. You won’t have any trouble finding one, that’s for sure! If it is your first time, why not tell me about your experience in the comments below.
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?I made a video of my honest feedback about the online chicken rice I’ve tried through a delivery app since the covid. So, online and offline food quality were compared in detail. Leave a comment what you think! ????????