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Located on Jalan SS14/1, Tien Kee Soup & Porridge is quite low profile, air conditioned and closed up in this quiet row of shops. I happened to be passing Subang Jaya today and thought I gave it a try, its been open for a while and featured on other blogs and newspapers quite a bit.

From the name, looks like porridge and soup are their specialty. Quite interesting, this shop seems to have a mix of Teow Chew cooking which is the porridge and Hakka cooking like Hakka abacus, braised pork, etc. The porridge looks interesting with fishes but a bit costly, starts from RM8 for the cheapest. Anyhow I think their prices have gone up a bit comparing to prices I read from other blogs.

Anyway, I tried their Hakka Abacus, yam with braised pork and a bowl of pork bittergound soup. The abacus “suen pun chee” is RM6.00 per plate and I must say its very good, not too sticky, can taste the yam moderately and nice. Yam with braised pork is ok, quite normal at RM12.00 for quite a big plate. The soup is very good, simple with bittergound, pork, tofu, liver, etc. in it at RM6.50.

I also tried their long bean rice, RM2.00 for a small bowl (listed as big bowl in menu, I wonder how small is the small one), its not bad with long beans, pork, dried shrimps and mushroom in it, but I find it a bit costly, better stick to white rice next time!

They also have things like yam rice, vinegar pig trotter, hakka braised pork with black fungus, etc. There are a lot of fish soup and porridges available too but can be quite costly. From the pix it looks like they put the whole fish in e.g. promphet fish porridge at RM16.

Not to say cheap to me, but at least the taste is good and still worth trying ;).

GPS: N3 04.011 E101 35.192

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That wee early morning after picking Micol, Ken Wei, Kit Yee and Ah Fei along the way… we finally reached Jason’s house in Kepong at 5.54:03am which is the meeting and starting point of the trip. Edwin whom spent the night there was already awaked with Jason waiting to greet us with some simple tuna sandwich they prepared the night before.

Soon, the rest arrived and we are all set to go, since there are 14 of us and only 3 cars, we split the passengers into 5 for the Jazz, 5 for the Myvi and 4 in my Ranger but most of the luggages and extra water are all fitted into the Ranger. We depart at 6.43:09am and head out to the Karak Highway heading to Bentong. From Bentong we made our way up to Kuala Lipis, passing Raub on the way.

At 8.59:35am, we finally reached the center of Kuala Lipis town, like much small towns in Malaysia, the shops are mainly concentrated in one area and its filled with the hustle and bustle of Saturday morning crowd going about their daily morning routine of breakfast, marketing and just opening up their business or going to work. We parked our cars by the jetty next to the river and decided to go on foot to hunt for Chong Ko Hakka Noodles (N4 11.247 E102 03.299) which is located in the middle of this upwards staircase shops. Its quite unique, as you are walking up the stairs, there are food shops on both side of you.

Since we are all great and hungry eaters, we all got down to action and ordered a bowl of the noodles for each of us with some addition of wan tan and sui kau. Chong Ko’s noodles goes for RM2.50 for the small one and RM3.00 for the big one (50 cents more with fishballs). We also order a plate of the local specialty, fried eggs with clams. Basically its clams (si hum) fried with 2 sunshine eggs. The local, small town coffee is somehow always good and the aunt selling it was friendly enough to explain to us that all the noodles there are made locally and even helped us to order a plate of fried noodles (with black sauce) to try.

The hakka noodles is great, soft and nice, not surprising since they made it themselves. Its just cooked simple and serve with minced pork on top, the original hakka way but still tasty ;). The clams to my surprised is very nice too, I mean imagine eating a plate of just clams, yucky right? But this one taste excellent especially when taken with the crispy fried eggs! The fried noodles the coffee aunt helped us to ordered is not bad too but its mostly tasting the local noodles.

Since we are in town, we also headed up to Tong Kok Hotel (N4 11.193 E102 03.259), its basically a low budget motel with a few rooms upstairs for rental and a old fashion coffeeshop downstairs. The unique thing about this place is that they are still using charcoal for their cooking. At the back of the shop, you can see on the side of the staircase leading to the basement are filled with sacks of charcoals. We sat down here for their home made kaya, which I must say is excellent, smooth and rich with some toast and steam bread. The bread are toasted and steamed on a charcoal boiler which the water is also used for drinks.

One funny thing happened here is the way that we are dressed. Imagine you have 14 people, armed with like 7 DSLRs/Semi-Pro plus 1 video camera, all dressed in the same light blue jerseys, and some having tags on them, heading shop to shop to eat and snapping the food like crazy, what would the local think? And sure enough, many of us got the local asking which group are we from? Ken Wei was very happy that one of the local uncle asking where are you “students” from? LOL :D. The lady at Tong Kok Hotel actually asked if we are there to join the singing competition! Seems that there was a singing competition in town organised by the Lions Club, hehe, my response was pure stone-ness :P.

We took a nice group photo by the river before heading out from Kuala Lipis but overall, its quite a neat small town with friendly locals and very nice noodles, a must try if you ever have a chance to in town ;). We headed out of town at 11.03:47am heading our next destination, Gua Musang.

Photos compliments of Law Tien Soon

Peninsula Makan Trip Part 2 Intro

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 - Day 1, Update 1, Kuala Lipis

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 - Day 1, Update 2, Gua Musang

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 - Day 1, Update 3, Kota Bharu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 - Day 2, Update 1, Kota Bharu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 - Day 2, Update 2, Merang, Terengganu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 - Day 3, Update 1, Kuala Terengganu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 - Day 3, Update 2, Chukai, Terengganu

Peninsula Malaysia Makan Trip Part 2 - Day 4, Last Day, Kuantan, Pahang

If you search around the blogs, most makan blogs will feature Wah Kiow which is a very famous Yong Tau Foo place in Lorong Peel next to Taman Maluri Jusco and IPD Cheras. That reminds me of my working days in Cheras where we used to eat at the chicken shop opposite Wah Kiow and would order some yong tau foo, but the chicken place is no longer around but Wah Kiow is still there.

It was after our mountain bike hashing (see http://wildgeeks.org) and I had like 4 bikes at the back of my truck and I found a parking at Jalan Peel instead of turning into the lorong. I saw a yong tau foo stall just at the corner of Jalan Peel to Lorong Peel and thought that Wah Kiow have move out. So without thinking too much and wanting to be able to watch my truck and all the bikes behind, we just sat and waited for the rest. A phone call later, I realised I am in the wrong shop! Hahaha… anyway, we decided to makan separately because all of us wanted to be able to see our vehicles and bikes.

So anyway, I didn’t managed to catch the name of this makan place but its pretty crowded, 5 of us ordered 1 assam fish, 1 char chee yok and lots of yong tau foo (ytf). Instead of making your own ytf, this place you just pick the pieces you want. I let the Rooster do the ordering because I am just too lazy after the hash.

The ytf are alright, I wouldn’t say fantastic but its on standard and is not bad. The sui kau however cannot fight with Wah Kiow and the bittergound just cannot fight with the fish paste place in Oldtown.

Assam fish is kembong, that is not too bad while the hakka stew pork (char chee yok) is average, still cannot fight with my dad’s

Overall is ok, about RM7.50 per person for a lot of food plus drinks
GPS: N3 07.604 E101 43.549

Makan first, think later

Tow Kee is famous in Seremban and a lot of people comes from all over the place to have their famous Hakka noodles. This place sells nothing but that and expect a long wait! I was hashing with the Wild Geeks inNegeri Sembilan and after dropping Cramper in Jelebu, we decided to use the Seremban way home.

While in Seremban town, the Bull wanted to stop for some food and our Medic being a local brought us to the all famous Tow Kee. We managed to get a parking in front (which is helpful since we have all our bikes exposed at the back), the place is just opposite the wet market and post office in town.

First impression, its just like any normal small town Chinese eatery and we immediately noticed people standing at the front of the shop waiting for their take away and a few tables of serious looking (cause of the long wait) customers waiting for their home.

At the back, an uncle is busy making the noodles fresh in the shop and its immediately cooked in front by this fierce looking aunt and the only person serving and taking orders is an Indon helper. The cooking is slow as the aunt had to cook one by one and she seems to be particular about the portions and she gets loud easily to the helper, hehehe… the helper had to turned on some oldies on the radio to calm her down… hahahaa…

Anyway, the Bull as usual keeps b***hing about the wait and keeps sending gestures to the helper to hurry his noodles. 30 minutes later, we finally got our noodles!

Its not very complex, just simple fresh and soft noodles being cooked and mix with minced pork and a little spring onions. The unique part is not the taste but the noodles, usually these kind of noodles are hard and stick together. This, you can see its soft, beautifully made and cooked.

Total damage for 3 bowls of the noodles and 1 can of soft drinks is about RM11++. So is the 30 minutes worth it? If you are in town and have some time to kill, why not, but to travel there from KL and wait 30 mins, I don’t think I will, prefer the dried beef noodles more
GPS: N2 43.787 E101 56.272

Before reaching seremban, I was in a village called Titi for lunch, nothing unusual but their bittergound with bbq pork are quite unique, if they only had better bbq pork, hehehe… just an image here:

Plus, many more images from the hash in the morning at Hutan Lipur Kijang, from sleepy faces to muddy bikes:

See more here

Makan first, think later