Ribs that make you salivate, steak that's treated right and jerk chicken so good we dream about them. Find out why Checkers is and always will be one of our favourite dining spots
It’s time for us to pay homage to that cunning place of ribs, grilled goods and arguably the best jerk chicken in town. We are regulars as most of the clientele here and have never been disappointed by a meal here yet.
Checkers is a place where merry friends gather to gorge on all things grilled usually of the porcine persuasion. However we can never really get past Porky's Best so all the other piggy stuff will have to be another review. The menu changes on the whim of the cook or when interesting ingredients are available. Hence on any day you might have a mixed bag on the blackboard like Harry Trotter, Lord of the Ribs (which are baby back) and Roasted Pork Knuckles.
However, Checkers also do pastas, the infamous jerk chicken and lip smacking steak with a side of stinking rose. Stinking rose being the romantic name for garlic roasted in olive oil until the cloves faint off the stalk and dissolves in your mouth. Start off with the homemade limeade. This is served in jam jars and coffee jars and it’s very, very good to cut through all that luscious, cholesterol dripping fat.
Grab a plate of grilled squid while you are waiting. It’s good here, soft and thrown on the grill in between meats. If it’s not hot enough for you, they have a rather suspicious fiery red homemade chilli sauce called ‘After Death Sauce’. Yes, its hot enough to singe your nose hairs. However, in my humble opinion there’s no need for extra condiments as the marinades and sauces here are good to slurp on its own. Porky’s Best is still the ultimate house favourite. It’s two chunks of meaty ribs, rolled in the house marinade and grilled until blackened. It comes heaped on your plate with a side of mash and corn.
"Bizzarely Porky's ice cream tastes like alcoholic cendol"
Die hard ribbers have been known to swear by these ribs since it has that perfect barbequed texture and succulent. One knows all well-known rib franchises when setting shop in our fair country usually goes down the Halal way so getting good Western style pork ribs is a find indeed. Order extra barbeque sauce with this. It's almost like XO this barbeque sauce (probably with a bit of happy spirits doused in). It's piquant, full bodied and addictive. Best of all it's good with everything. They also have a hot, hot mustard sauce but lately we haven't seen it.
Whenever we come here, it’s always tough to choose between the jerk chicken and Porky’s. Jerk chicken here comes in two juicy thighs dry-rubbed silly with spices. Traditionally jerk spices usually contains an allspice (a Jamaican pimento or cherry pepper) and scotch bonnet peppers which is among the hottest peppers on the Scoville scale (hmm… wonder if any of it found its way in the After Death Sauce). So with all that lip tingling ingredients, Jerk chickens are usually spicy mamas! However here its not tongue numbing spicy rather pleasantly so with our more local chilli and spices rubbed then grilled among the coals. The name jerk can also come from the fact that the chicken is ‘jerked’ with something sharp to make holes. Spices and oils are then rubbed and stuffed into this hole. This makes for a tastier and moister chook.
Well… now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, this Jerk chicken is one of my favourite meals. It’s always succulent, dribbling with juices with a skin full of spicy flavour. Checkers always does its own take on a salad/salsa. On this particular visit, it’s made of crunchy papaya, watercress, onions, beans muddled with lime juice and oil. Yummy! Best of all alongside the chicken is a lovely grilled plantain, sweet, caramel flavoured, banana extravaganza. I could never get the plantain on my own, someone would always steal it from my plate.
Steak here is also lovely. It’s a hunk of meat tossed on the grill, charred within an inch of its life while remaining nice and vampy inside. There are some days when all I want is an iron shot and Checkers does it well. Sometimes they even have prime rib. That’s why we always come back to Checkers. There’s always something new on that blackboard.
Now for the desserts. Porky’s Ice Cream is a must here. Holy tamale- this is serious good ice cream. Bizarrely, it tastes like an alcoholic version of a cendol. Case in point, the vanilla ice cream here is seriously creamy and has a richness not unlike santan. Instead of gula melaka there is a generous slash of brandy that somehow when combined with the ice cream comes out mellow and sweet. To top this insane creation are lychees, cendols, nuts and squares of cincau. This is so good that my friends were licking the bowl at the very end, tipping it to their faces so every smidgen of cream could be reached. Also good here is the chocolate mudcake, spongy and probably with a generous splash of brandy too. This is a warm ender as opposed to Porky’s ice cream which is more like cold fireworks. Also served with that super vanilla ice cream. Right about now the next table started singing. People here are very happy and are on a first name basis with the cook and frontman Sam who generally does everything from serving drinks, taking your order and dropping cheeky quips and one-liners.
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Porky's Best, die hard ribbers swear by this
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Foodster's Verdict
Checkers
Address:
19, Lorong Setia Bistari 2,
Bukit Damansara,
Kuala Lumpur Tel: 03 2095 3304
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