This Malaysian Bento Box Restaurant Is One Family’s Legacy in San Jose

I was driving by a strip mall in South San Jose when a window portrait of a cartoon chicken in a Hawaiian shirt and Comme des Garçons shoes caught my eye. What I assumed would be a fried chicken spot turned out to be a Malaysian restaurant, a rarity in the South Bay. Inside Chicken Licious’ homey dining room, you’ll find a vibrant menu featuring curry puffs, nasi lemak and asam laksa. While you wait for your order, you can sip on a cup of chicken broth and prepare for your feast by loading up on sambal anchovies, pickled chiles and chili garlic sauce.

Kevin and Shen Yong opened Chicken Licious in 2022. But it isn’t the first time they’ve shared a kitchen — 15 years ago, the brothers worked together at Langkawi Malaysian Island Restaurant, their parents’ restaurant in San Mateo. After the restaurant closed down during the 2009 economic crisis, Kevin owned a Hawaiian barbecue restaurant in Sacramento for five years. He returned to the Bay because he wanted his son to grow up around his family. Shen proposed they partner up for a bento box catering business, which they started by selling cartons of silky, slow-poached Hainan chicken, exclusively. The success of that venture encouraged them to open Chicken Licious, a restaurant where they could share more of their favorite Malaysian dishes.

Opening a restaurant seems to be a family tradition. “I have five uncles in Malaysia,” says Shen. “They all opened restaurants. My mom’s older brother owns a restaurant in Milpitas — Lyang Lyang.” The approach at Chicken Licious differs from other popular Malaysian restaurants in the Bay in the sense that it’s focused on street food and based on the flavors of their hometown, Cameron Highlands, which is known for its fresh produce. They’ve expanded their bento box concept to include ayam penyet (smashed fried chicken), ayam bakar (grilled chicken), chicken redang and pork stir-fry. Each dish comes with a side of peanuts, nyonya acar (a pickled vegetable mixture), and rice infused with pandan and coconut milk or chicken stock. The meals are fun to eat because each element hits you with a bold dose of acidity, sweetness or heat, and harmonizes into something unique. There’s always some element of freshness and textural contrast.

The Yongs say they wanted to replicate the food they grew up eating in Malaysia as closely as possible. “Most of our recipes are family recipes,” says Shen, “They came from my grandma.” (The word “family” is literally written on the dining room wall.) The brothers are against toning down or compromising any of the flavors, going as far as not allowing the heat level to be adjusted on any dish. They also have high standards. Shen poaches each batch of Hainan chicken for two and a half hours, meticulously maintaining the temperature the whole time. They say they’ll simply close the restaurant on days that they can’t find quality ingredients or when their chicken doesn’t meet expectations.

On my first visit, I slurped through an entire plate of char kway teow, a stir-fried flat rice noodle dish with shrimp, lap cheong, eggs, bean sprouts and pork cracklings that’s heavy on the wok hei. I loved the side of funky, spicy shrimp paste that cuts through the richness of the dish while amplifying its shrimpiness. The ayam bakar is another hit — it’s marinated in a mixture of bay leaves, galangal, palm sugar and a variety of sweet soy sauce traditionally used for grilled chicken. Here, the chicken is fried to produce a light, crisp exterior that gives way to a juicy, subtly aromatic interior.

The brothers were concerned about opening a Malaysian restaurant in an area of San Jose that is predominantly Vietnamese because they thought it would be hard to establish a customer base with people who don’t know the cuisine. But the Hainan chicken, which remains the most popular item on their menu, is a familiar dish throughout Southeast Asia that gets people through the door. Once inside, they might be enticed by the aromas of that smoky char kway teow, or the fragrant herbiness of the bah kuh teh, a pork soup made with the ribs, belly and intestines.

“For most people, it’s their first try,” says Kevin, “If they come back, it means they like it.”

It appears that a lot of people do. Already, Chicken Licious has gained a cult following, with customers from as far as Walnut Creek, Marin and San Francisco, who make the trip to San Jose at least once a month when they feel homesick. “A lot of our customers are Malaysian,” says Shen. “Once they eat it, they say, ‘It brings me back to my hometown.’” The Yongs take pride in their ability to replicate these flavors and love to share the history and techniques behind dishes with customers.

As well as they’ve done in introducing more people to the cuisine, the two brothers have opposing ideas on what lies ahead for the restaurant. “I’m a businessman,” says Kevin. “If we can handle it, I hope we can expand to Sunnyvale.” He acknowledges the importance of quality control when growing a business, but wants each of them to have their own restaurant. Shen, on the other hand, says he’d like to grow more slowly. “People want to make big money right away — I want to do it too, but once you want that your quality will go down,” he says.

Ultimately, though, the brothers both want the same thing — to hook people on the sour, funky, herbal flavors of their family’s recipes. And they’re already well on their way.

Chicken Licious is open 11 a.m.–7 p.m. daily except for Sundays, when it closes at 3 p.m. The restaurant is located at 2863 Senter Rd. in San Jose.