[Penang] Dinner at Flower Pot-Roasted Chicken, MacAlister Road

One of the newer dining spots in George Town features chickens roasted in make-shift “ovens” fashioned from flower pots! These are heavy claypots, more like large Chinese urns, where heat is retained and distributed evenly, ensuring the chickens are moist yet greaseless, and meltingly-tender.

The chicken were marinated in Chinese 5-spice, turmeric, salt & pepper, before being pot-roasted.

The rather popular eatery (most customers were curious first-timers, it seemed) also featured other side-dishes, besides the pot-roasted chicken, most of which seemed rather basic & rustic:

  1. Double-boiled wintermelon, Chinese wolfberries, red dates and chicken soup. Pretty light consomme, with a savoury-sweet flavour.

  2. Egg-onion omelette - light & fluffy, with the sweetness coming from the caramelised Bombay purple onions.

  3. The Flower pot-roasted chicken - served with calamansi lime halves, to be squeezed over the chicken for a tangy flavour. The chicken was moist and flavoursome, although not something “out-of-this-world” that will make me return specifically for it.

The garlicky chili dip was amazing, and really pepped up the chicken dish - don’t miss it.

  1. Stir-fried lettuce, topped with meat floss - I thought the best part of the dish were the crisp, golden lardons sprinkled liberally on the wilted lettuce leaves, which also got a lift from oyster sauce.

  2. Chicken-flavoured rice - this was pretty flavoursome, where the steamed rice was dressed in drippings from the roasted chicken, served topped with shallot, crisp-fried garlic and chopped scallions.

Simple home-cooked flavours here - the dishes seemed so neutral, I don’t really know which regional Chinese cuisine to categorise it under. It’s located inside Jiu Ke Kopitiam, on the corner of MacAlister Road and Madras Lane, across the road from the Penang Museum.

Address
76768 Famous Flower Pot Roasted Chicken
104, Macalister Road
11400 George Town, Penang
Tel: +6012 466 5168
Opening hours: 6pm-10.30pm daily, except Thursday (closed)

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Do you have any idea the significance of the toothpick on the chicken (third photo)?

Not really. It was also removed before serving.

:rofl: Then, it must be a secret code.

I’m guessing that - since there were two types of marinade used - one with 5-spice, and the other with the addition of turmeric, the toothpick could’ve been used to identify the one without turmeric (less “yellow” in the photo above).

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