Jackie M, Concord

After reading a review on another food blog about the delicious Malaysian food at Jackie M – I made a mental note to head over to Concord and try it out. On my hitlist was their Hainan Chicken rice, which is one of my favourite dishes of this cuisine.

Unfortunately, on that rainy night, the boy and I ventured to Jackie M we found out that the Hainan Chicken Rice has been erased off this menu and is “no longer available”. I was slightly devastated but since we had already made the trip to Concord, we thought we’d try out some of their other offerings. We settle on chicken satays to start, with mains consisting of chicken laksa and the char kway teoh, also with chicken.

Jackie M’s decor is nothing flash, they are shielded from the street by a clear plastic sheet which is surprisingly heavy to move and the tables feel like canteen style seating. There is only one waitress on duty tonight and even though they aren’t many tables to serve, the food comes out slowly and this wait only gets worse as more people try to get a table at the eatery during the night.

Our chicken satay skewers come out first and they are accompanied with an authentic peanut dipping sauce, so fresh that you can see the chopped up peanuts. The chicken is nice and tender, and lightly grilled to perfection. There are only 4 little skewers and between the boy and I, we quickly polish it off.  

Chicken Skewers $12

We’re still hungry and thankfully it’s not too long before our mains come out. My laksa comes out first and it’s rather creamy looking, hinting at the amount of coconut milk lurking within it. It tastes just as it looks, a creamy kind of laksa, not particularly spicy and contains half a hard boiled egg, beansprouts and a sprinkle of fried onions. The chicken is very dry and tasteless, I feel a bit ripped off having to pay an extra $4 for it as the $14 basic laksa is vegetarian only. It is quite possibly the most overpriced bowl of laksa I have ever tasted. Very disappointed.

Chicken Laksa $18

The boy gets the char kway teoh, which is fried flat rice noodles seasoned with what appears to be soy sauce, shallots, bean sprouts and fried onions. It’s appropriately salty but has a strange sweet aftertaste which I suspect could be MSG, because even though it doesn’t taste quite right as char kway teoh, it is a bit addictive for some otherwise unremarkable fried noodles and we were rather thirsty after eating it. The chicken in this dish suffered from the same problem of being too dry and flavourless and again, we had to pay the extra $4 for the meat.

Char kway teoh with Chicken $18

All in all, we were not impressed – the chicken satay was great but it all went downhill from there, with the rest of the chicken dishes not living up to their promise and the prices are not justified for local neighbourhood Malaysian fare, especially their practice of charging extra for the meat on top of their already overpriced base dish price.

Jackie M
85 Majors Bay Rd, Concord 2137
Ph: (02) 9743 0390
Thursday – Saturday (5pm – 10pm)