Oct 16

Its been 2 years since my last visit here, although its for work, I still need to eat right? So, I got into a mood to retrace back all the food I like to eat in Hong Kong.

The first thing I had is a superbly yummy bowl of beef tripes noodles, which I had in a small shop with no signboard at Thomson Street in Wanchai. How small is the shop, imagine its a half shop (Hong Kong standard is half Malaysia) and half of it is kitchen and the other half is dining area. The shop fit a max of no more than 8 person, I was the 7th when I got it.

Sharing table is a norm there, most of the time, you need not as, just sit down if there is no one there and they understand, because that’s how their system works. So I ordered my noodles, unfortunately they ran out of “hor fun” (koay teow) so I went with meehoon instead. The meehoon here are the vietnamese type, which are thick.

The broth of the is just amazingly nice… sweet from the flavours of the beef and a nice mix of aroma from herbs in it. The beef are tender, nice and quite a generous portion. It cost HK$22.00 a bowl and this is consider cheap over here as bigger shops may charge more. Add another 7 bucks and I got a nice cup of ice milk tea, which is a must if you are in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, as I was rushing for my meeting and I had only 10 mins to enjoy it.

For dinner, I decided that I want my roast goose (siew ngor)! Roast goose are roast duck like, must the meat are softer and more tender (fats too). I had mine with bbq pork (char siew) as well and it comes with some vegetables and rice. That cost me about HK$35-40.00 I think, can’t remember, excluding drinks!

One of the bread I like in Hong Kong is known as Life Bread, Honey & Egg flavour. Its plain lightly flavour bread and I like to take them plain. A loaf will cost HK$10.00 and you can get this in any supermarket and I find it just lovely to take with a cup of hot coffee or tea :).

Next on my list is a very simple dish, fried luncheon meat with eggs on rice! Its kind of a chinese fast food, you can have this in like most “char chan teng” (coffeeshop). As I was tired and sick after my meeting, I decided to pack and eat in at the hotel. I got mine from Ka Ka Lok in TST in Kowloon, just a short walk from my Hotel.

Its HK$29.00 and comes with free soup! You can either take this dish with just soya sauce on top, or they have sauce like curry, black pepper and tomato to top it. I took mine with black pepper this time and it’s just nice and simple. But the only thing is, there is really not a single tiny bit of vegetables on it, it really means only rice, luncheon meat and eggs!

I went for a set breakfast, its always a value to go for it. For HK$22.00, I got a macaronni with ham, 2 fried eggs and piece of buttered bread plus a hot drink, this can filled you up past lunch time!

Egg tarts, costing HK$4.00 one is also on my list and I took it with a nice cup of tea! Egg tarts are soft and melts off in your mouth but the pastry can be a little heavy in butter though.

Unfortunately, this trip, I was down with flu midway and wasn’t really in a mood to travel to eat or hunt for my favourite food… things like claypot rice, curry fishball, wanton noodles, steam rice, teng chai porridge,  pork chop rice, all sort of desserts, etc. So, technically, these are my breakfast, lunch and dinner that I had in between work :(.

Just before leaving Hong Kong, I thought I try something new and while I had sometime at the IFC where I am taking the train to the airport, I try out the Soup Cafe. They had all sort of set meals here but not very local but I saw a Drunken Wings & Duck Glizzards for HK$25.00.

I gave that a try, its basically chicken wings and duck glizzards, served as a cold dish with a heavy cooking wine tasting sauce at the bottom. To my surprise, its quite nice and I like it ;). But it doesn’t comes with rice or anything, so I found another interesting thing to try at the airport. Oh, while waiting for the train to the airport, I saw this handphone charging station, quite cool, support most phones. The charger fits my phone, but don’t work la… written there O2 and HTC :(

QQ rice, is supposed to be some kind of healthy rice which you can either choose your fillings and rice type or go for the standard recommendations. You can choose from brown rice, purple rice, red rice, etc. with a load of fillings. Check out their menu here.

I took the double pork purple & red rice which is supposed to only have 270 calories at HK$21.00 without drinks or HK$26.00 with a bottle of healthy soya milk. The filling is tasty but the rice is tasteless, so you gotta eat them together la. Its something interesting to try but heck, I won’t eat it again, haha… healthy food don’t taste as nice I guess :P.

Anyway I am glad to be home where I am able to drive to work and not get sardined in MTR and people rushing everywhere and having my nice bowl of prawns noodles for lunch.

Oct 7

Con’t from part 6…

From Pontian, we moved on to Skudai where we want to sample the all famous Skudai Duck Mee that we have seen on Axian AEC programme. It’s said that the duck are braised in a gravy that have been braising ducks for 37 years now! Imagine that, this semangat people actually kept the gravy going for 37 years already to braise their duck.

With very high expectations, we got to Skudai Duck Mee (and narrowly missing head-on accident as blur blur me going the wrong way :P) and the owner here seems to be very friendly, he even posed for photographs but too bad Sky’s lost his pictures in JB :(. We ordered the duck with a load of others like “kai choy” (leaf mustard), braised pig’s head (chee tau pei), intestines, etc. to go with koay teow.

With the name being Skudai Duck Mee… I would think the noodles and soup here are great… but ermm… its not… the soup are not tasty as I expected… its like those duck noodles instant taste. The braised pig’s head and intestines are ok.

What is good here are the braised “kai choy” which I find to be very nice! The other good one of course its their duck, first impression the duck is a little dry but you have to dip it in the dark thick gravy at the bottom to get the good taste, after all, its 37 years old :).

Skudai Duck Mee
No. 29?Jalan Emas Putih Dua, Taman Sri Skudai, 81300 Johor Bahru, Johor.
Tel: 07-5563170
GPS: N1 32.790 E103 39.393

We didn’t ordered full portions for everyone as most of us are still overwhelmed by stuffing ourselves during breakfast. It cost a total of about RM90.00 for everyone.

When we were at the duck mee place, we spotted this bottle of pineapple preserved, Patrick then explains that these are pineapple enzyme which are basically pineapple, lemon and sugar left to ferment in a bottle. See video below:

We decided to give Patrick’s home in JB a visit and to take a short break there. Its basically shophouses with the family’s hardware business downstairs. Some of us took an afternoon shower there while some of us got into games of chor dai di, entertaining little Wai Wai or just watching TV.

We then head to Stulang Laut to check out Elaine & Patrick’s school which is facing Singapore next to ZON. We went around to locate Restoran Woon Kiang after that which is recommended for their koay teow kia by Elaine’s mum unfortunately, they are only opened for business at 5pm. So to burn sometime, we went to ZON to shop with Sky and Ed contributing further to the Johor economy ;).

Later back at Woon Kiang, we can already see cars pouring in for koay teow kia. We wasted no time and order braised pork, pig’s head, tofu, eggs, etc. with our koay teow kia. The soup is very tasty and the braised meats are a whole lot softer than what we had for lunch. But of course, these are different food but I think everyone really enjoyed our early dinner here. I really like their braised pig’s head here, superly soft and nice to eat, the tongue is not bad too but not many people fancy it as I noticed. It adds up to almost RM90 as well with 11 of us eating. A very good place for koay teow kia, thanks Elaine & Patrick for taking us here!

Restoran Woon Kiang
No. 62, Jalan Stulang Darat, 80300 Johor Bahru, Johor.
Tel: 019-7690005
GPS: N01 28.325 E103 46.634

Con’t in part 8…

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

Oct 7

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

Sep 15

Direct translations of “lou shi fun” (in Cantonese) would mean “rat noodles” simply because it resembles the tail of rats. Most lou shi fun is a little soft and would not be longer than 2 inches but somehow Yi Poh in Seremban seems to do it differently.

They are known for their long and tangy (just like spring) lou shi fun served in dry style. I was on my way to PD and thought would be nice to stop in Seremban for lunch, I head to Temiang and head to Yi Poh after reading about it on a few blogs.

I ordered the famous dry lou shi fun, their big wantan and a bowl of pig stomach’s soup. The dry lou shi fun is mixed with dark sauce topped with minced pork, spring onions and pieces of char siew (bbq pork) on it. I mixed them up and took it with their special spicy chili sauce and no joke, its really flaming spicy! The noodles are very chewy, tangy and takes a bit of effort to chew. Its as if they have little spring in each noodle and they are really long in size. The char siew is very dry to my liking, not sure if this is the local style. Its not bad, something special but I still prefer softer lou shi fun, hehe..but the price is ok RM3.70 for a big size bowl enough to feed two.

However, I really like their big wantan here, the wantan skin is really soft and the filling is very tasty! At 40 cents each, its reasonable. Don’t mind coming back for their wantan again ;).

The pork stomach’s soup is just ok, priced at RM2.70 for a small bowl. Taste is quite balance, not too spicy and yet tasty. But the pork stomach is a bit hard, I still prefer the one I had at Huen Kee where the pork stomach is still tender and soft :).

Overall pricing here is good, food is not bad and quite special with the springy, tangy noodles but I still prefer the softer ones but really love their big wantan.

GPS: N2 44.044 E101 56.421

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Aug 27

Everyone knows that chicken rice ball is the icon of Melaka’s food but its also considered to be a very tourist type of food now especially in places like Chung Wah & Famosa whic is famous and can be packed at times. I was introduced to this sort of foodcourt like place, which is basically just zinc covered under a big tree along Jalan Tun Sri Lanang.

Its more of a breakfast place and the chicken rice ball finish up by 12.30pm, so be early ;). For RM3.50 per pax, you get 6 chicken rice balls and a serving of chicken. Otherwise its just RM1.50 for 6 balls of chicken rice alone. To me, chicken is just the side dish that I can do without, you can eat the chicken rice ball on its own as it is very tasty especially when you add on the chili sauce. This stall home made the chicken rice ball and just chop up and serve them here.

In the same area, you will also find Seng Lee which sells Hee Kiaw Mee, its just fishballs and fish paste noodles typically but the serving is also different. It reminds me of the similar one I had in Taiping, but that is served with lai fun. So basically, the noodles of your choice, dried or soup, served with fishball, fish paste (coloured orange), some pork and a nice spoon chili paste to mix! RM2.80 for regular and RM3.50 for the large one.

Didn’t have enough space in my stomach to try the wantan mee but I am very satisfied with the chicken rice ball and the hee kiaw mee. A recommended breakfast place in Melaka for me ;).

GPS: N2 12.367 E102 15.182

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