This week we are going loco for local. It’s ayam goreng kunyit, pretty much chicken fried in turmeric cooked with green beans, served up with hot rice, doused with thick and sweet soy sauce and a kick ass sambla belacan and it’s only RM5! So much win!
” Eat until you sweat… oh yeah… ”
Chicken. Rice. Sambal. You really can’t go wrong with this food combo. Mat Rock built a business around this. Bite-sized pieces of chicken, marinated in turmeric and salt is fried to a wonderfully crisp exterior while the inside remains tender. To this, a handful of fried onions and beans are added for some crunch. All this rests on a bed of fluffy white rice.
And then, we come to his cheeky tagline, ‘Makan Sampai Berpeluh’ (literally eat until you sweat). You wonder why, take a bite…then you start to sweat. Your tongue burns. Your ears pop… then you eat some more.
This is the secret to his best-selling dish. The Sambal. OH WOW THE SAMBAL. It’s a simple sambal belacan, but it BURNS, it burns hot and crazy. It touches everything in your packet – the chicken, rice, veggies – and turns it into a firebomb. Crazily, the intense hotness accentuates the flavour of the whole dish, as the spice pairs beautifully with the blank canvas that is the rice and the salty sweetness from the chicken, veggies and dashes of sweet soy sauce. It is so delicious and crazily addictive. And yes, you will ‘berpeluh!’ (sweat) so no false advertising here folks.
Mat Rock got his name because when he started up in the late 90s he had long ‘rock kapak’ hair. He started with a typical nasi campur place and then realized that people wanted something simple and satisfying for their lunch. So he narrowed it down to either perfectly fried meats or seafood with rice, a bit of veggie and sambal. The rest is history and he now owns seven trucks and some stalls around KL.
Mat Rock Ayam Goreng Kunyit Special
FOODSTERS VERDICT
| Address | There have 7 food trucks but the one we went to is at HSBC, by Masjid Jamek. Tel: 03- 9202 7314 (office) 03- 9202 9314 (restaurant) 1300 88 5800 (delivery) |
| Open | Lunch and dinner depending on truck |
| Pro | Consistent quality and which other meat and seafood choices too |
| Cons | Yes… you will get pretty sweaty, queuing up at rush hour and eating the sambal… |
| Price Range | RM5- RM8 |
| Parking | Canlah |
| Certification | Muslim Owned |