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This is a cosy and airconditioned dim sum place in Kota Kemuning, the food are quite decent and fresh here. I find it a bit pricey or have prices of food have really went up so much?

Anyway… I ordered the siew mai at RM3.30 per plate, prawns dumping (har kao) at RM3.90, loh mai kai (glutinous rice) at RM3.30, a tray of 3 pork buns (char siew pau) at RM4.20, wu kok (yam dumpling) at RM3.00 and fried carrot cake at RM 3.90 per plate.

The siew mai and har kao was ok, quite fresh, nice and the prawns are good. Fried carrot cake is quite a big plate with a lot of topping. Loh mai kai have a lot of filings too, chicken plus mushroom. The wu kok is so so, maybe nicer if its still hot. Pork bun have a nice cooking wine aroma but taste wise is normal.

We paid a total of RM24.60 for 2 person plus drinks with 2 unfinished char siew pau to take home ;). Decent place to have dim sum and clean environment but a bit pricey.

Dim Sum @ Little Master Kitchen
32G Jalan Anggerik Vanilla R31/R Kota Kemuning, 40450 Shah Alam.
GPS: N3 00.281 E101 32.247

Chai koay is something well known for up north here in the Penang-Kedah region, but if you ever had a chance, try the chai koay at Sg. Bakap on Penang’s mainland. If you are heading to Penang from the south, just before existing at Juru toll, you will notice the signboard of a toll exit to Jawi & Sg Bakap.

In Sg. Bakap, the most popular and origin place for chai koay is Restoran Soon Lee Hou located along Jalan Besar Sg Bakap. I visited this place during breakfast time and it seems to be very popular with the local as the place is very busy and packed.

Here, the chai koay are served as part of the their dim sum choices. So you order your usual dim sum you fancy, then the different type of chai koay. They have the usual chai koay with mangkuang inside or kuchai but also another type with pumpkin in it. The difference of the chai koay here is that the skin are soft, and I mean so soft that it sticks to the plate. You technically have to scoop it up to eat, doesn’t looks very appetizing but taste wise is ok. The way to enjoy it (by observing the way the locals take it) is to have a plate of chai koay to yourself, squeeze chili sauce all over it and dig in ;).

One of the highlight of their dim sum here are their stuffed crab dim sum and steamed yam. In plate you get 2 small crab shells stuffed with crab and pork meat steamed together, this is my favourite here, very nice! The steamed yam is ok, not too sweet and not too oily. The other one is their fried prawns cake, very nice and crispy too!

You can also order soup, as we see many tables doing it and some even take the soup with noodles or rice in the morning. So we tried their fish with salted vege soup, its quite good. We also ordered a plate of fried glass noodles which is nice as well. The cooking here are teochew style which chai koay is part of and many of these can be found in this region as well.

Overall, we spent about RM50 for 5 of us for breakfast here. Its quite a unique experience, but I still prefer the normal chai koay I am used to :).

Restoran Soon Lee Hou
No.34 Mukim 12, Jalan Besar, Sg Bakap
Sg Jawi, 14200 Seberang Perai Selantan, Penang
GPS: N5 13.473 E100 29.714

Yen Nam, the man who just got married decided to take us around Kulim for food till we drop… we started by going to Wenxi for Dim Sum. It was a Sunday and a working day there in Kedah but somehow, it feels like a non working day as you see most of the local are still at dim sum breakfast and Yen Nam seems to know everyone there :O.

I can’t recall how much was it, I think it was around RM60? for dim sum for 2 tables, consider cheaper than KL a lot. They have the usual steam and fried varieties here. The dim sum are ok, not bad and a little different from those in KL too. They have like steam yam dim sum there, something I have not seen in KL. The lotus leaf rice, fried lobak kueh and pau is quite nice as well.

Pretty decent place and good pricing for dim sum here but come earlier should have more choice, we sleepy heads only head there at 10am plus :P.

Wenxi Dim Sum, Kulim, Kedah
GPS: N5 22.537 E100 32.390

Hustle and bust of the city, this dim sum demonstrates just that, packed with almost all the tables full 90 percent of the time and the restaurant is trying to keep up with customers’ orders replenishing and serving dim sum. Parking can be a bit tough here, best is to park Jalan Landak and walk down as you can see most of the cars double parked here at the inner of Jalan Kancil. Its only 6.45am and its already packed!

The immediate feeling I got from this place is it gives you a very good warm weekend breakfast feeling a comfortable homely neighbourhood. With many houses above the shops here, you will noticed that a lot of senior folks occupy this place for breakfast to catch up with neighbours, friends and chat away with hot dim sum and chinese tea.

I would not describe the food here as great, base and texture is there but I feels it lack taste and a bit ‘rough’ type of dim sum, but can be a good thing, meaning less salt and less flavoring! These are just simple and hearty breakfast serving the local neighbourhood.

The most popular thing that everyone eats here is not their dim sum but their chicken rice! Yup, chicken rice in the morning. Its actually chicken with mushrooms and chinese sausages steamed on top of rice then covered with some spring onions and sauce when cooked. Its a bit dry on the rice as the sauce is little but the chicken are soft and tender, something different… if they have salted fish, this would have been a blast in my opinion but then again, they serve food light in taste here?

The dim sum are alright, the average and not salty type like I mentioned, I tend to take it as less salty = less artificial flavoring ;).The loh mai kai (chicken gloutonous rice) looks good, having chicken, a piece of bbq pork (char siew) as well, looks well sauce and moist, just again not salty enough, healthy again ;).

Quite a bit of the folks here also ‘da bao’ (pack) takeaway of chee cheong fun and fried meehoon from the stall nearby and eat here, looks quite interesting, will try it the next time.

To order, you have to get your table, then walk up to the main steamer, grab a tray and order away. Best if you can decide what you want quickly as the queue seems to get long and you will experience that as you are about to select that particular dim sum, a hand come in and grab it away from you. That is how fast things sell around here, so be precise, be fast ;). As for tea, the aunty there will bring it around to your table, don’t worry about that.

It cost us RM29.80 for tea for 4, 8 dim sum, 1 loh mai kai and 1 chicken rice. Not cheap at all, then again what is nowadays? Thanks to the inflation chain caused by the senseless hasty fuel increase :(. I have a good feel having breakfast at this place, not bad, feels healthy too ;).

Tuck Cheong Dim Sum
GPS: N3 08.156 E101 42.784

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Con’t from part 3…

We managed to catch up with the Chung family at Ayer Hitam toll where we group up and head to Zenxin Organic Park in Kluang. Its just located just 5-10 minutes from the toll and its a huge place with plenty of parking. The park is opened to visitors and you are able to see for yourself how fruits and vegetables are plants and you can actually rent a bicycle to go around it. I would think its a good educational tour for kids but all of us grown up kids seems to enjoy it too :P.

We got our bicycle, for 2 hours it only cost RM5, you can bring your own bike too but too much hassle I would think… the bikes here are ok, they are all Lerun’s Mendova… a simple rigid frame MTB, good enough for this park ride but somehow, mine the chain keeps coming of 3-4 times. So I had to go back halfway to change to another bike :(.

We hit off the park to the pond side, where there are a lot of vegetables growing… we got into 1 of the pumpkin garden and started taking funny photos with pumpkin growing on top of our head. Then we cycled around the pond and Sor J got conned (actually willingly) into taking a photo with a brinjal and hence, the legend of his blue black b*** emerged :P. Later, we move up hill to the dragon fruits orchard and a hill top observation tower.

After an hour plus, we are really tired, returned our bikes and try out some of the organic dragon fruits beverages at the cafe. The dragon fruits juice is quite tasteless like the dragon fruit, so its the combination of other juices that you mixed that makes the difference. Anyway, food queue is long here and so we head on to Kluang for lunch and most of us is excited about visiting the original Kluang Railway Coffee Station!

ZENXIN ORGANIC PARK
Batu 9, Jalan Batu Pahat ,
86000 Kluang, Johor
Tel: +60 (7) 7595196
GPS: N1 57.755 E103 12.712

We got to Kluang town in a short while and headed to the railway station and guess what… its closed! Arghh… so sad.. all the way from KL and its closed sob… anyhow, so we are hungry in an unfamilar town feeling dissapointed, so Ed, Calvin Chung and myself took out our GPS and hunt for makan place nearby. We ended up at Chop Foo Chow at Jalan Duku… its a dim sum place and I wanted to try foo chow pau.

Chop Foo Chow is a nicely renovated corner shop, interior is nice, besides dim sum, I saw people having steamboat there too. But as usual, we didn’t want to eat too much to save some tummy space to try out the beef noodles at Restoran Sup Lembu Tong Jiat just across the road.

Dim Sum here was ok, the usual but they have some different types with yam, meat floss, etc. The foo chow pau are actually the usual round shape pau with tai pau type of filling inside, comes in big and small size. The big one is RM3.00, small one is RM1.20 each… cost of living in Johor quite high leh…

Chop Foo Chow
No. 2, Jalan Duku, Kluang, Johor
Tel: 07-7712328
GPS: N2 02.215 E103 19.160

On the opposite, we went to Restoran Sup Lembu Tong Jiat for some beef noodles. The beef noodles here comes in size of small RM4.50, medium RM5.50 and big RM6.50. The small one is really smaller than average, so the medium size on is considered as regular. The beef noodles choices here includes the usual mee, meehoon, koay teow or lai fun (used in assam laksa type) and only soup based, no dried version. Calvin and Ed got their noodles first, and they were wondering how come besides chili sauce, there’s a bottle of vinegar on the table, so they happily conned me and Sor J that the vinegar is to dip beef like a sauce. So when I got my noodles, I happily try it and its was sour like crazy, then Sor J suggest that maybe its for you to add the vinegar to the chili sauce and I saw this uncle a few tables away doing just that!

Anyhow, the beef noodles are really good, although costly but you get a lot of beef parts in the bowl and great thing about this noodles are the soup. Unlike the normal beef noodles I had tried, the soup here are light and clear looking. The soup is still very tasty and not oily and its full of herbal and beef flavour but leave a scent of sweetness in your mouth after drinking it. I would rate this beef noodles very good for the soup alone, made my trip to Kluang worth it all!

They also sell beef jerkies and floss here, going from RM12 to RM15 depending on packaging and types. Before leaving, I checked out their namecard, looks like its also known as the Tangkak beef noodles and they have branch in Melaka and KL too :).

Restoran Sup Lembu Tong Jiat
No. 5, Jalan Langsat, 86000 Kluang, Johor
Tel: 019-771983 or 012-7587952

After filling up our stomachs… we then head out to our next destination… Kukup! Con’t in part 5…

Links:

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 1 - Day 1
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 2 - Day 1
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 3 - Day 2
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 4 - Day 2
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 5 - Day 2
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 6 - Day 3
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 7 - Day 3
Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip 2.5 - Part 8- Day 3 & 4