Leong Kee – Rockin’ it old-school… like a boss

Stall on the sidewalk outside 76, Jalan Tun H.S. Lee, 50000, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

We normally don’t like going to KL if we can help it, because we hate traffic jams and overpriced parking. But there was an anti-Lynas petition thing going on at Dataran Merdeka and we decided to brave the super-congested streets of KL to go contribute our signatures.

They committed to stay there until they get a million signatures. I hope they've hit their target by now.

Having signed the thing, and since we are seldom in KL, we went looking for dinner around the vicinity. What followed can be summed up as two unfulfilled dreams and one incredibly lucky find.

Unfulfilled Dream 1

I am ashamed to say that, though I’ve lived in Klang Valley for more than 10 years, I have yet to eat at Coliseum. Now, the same friends who were appalled at this also told me that the food was only mediocre. So my reason for wanting to eat there was not really for the food; it was just so I could finally say I did. Hopefully before the geriatric wait staff… err… retire.

Anyway, that was our original dinner destination. Then on the way there, we passed by Soong Kee Beef Noodles and I casually pointed out to Lady Fartsalot that the pork porridge there was pretty good. She immediately jumped and said THAT was the porridge she had wanted to try a few years ago but never had the chance to up till now!!! She MUST try it!!!

But I wanted Coliseum! I tried to talk her out of it. I had waited more years for Coliseum. This was supposed to be MY night to finally have the thing I’ve always wanted to try, dammit!

There are men, far better men than I am, who are able to win these sorts of arguments against their significant others. As for me, well, it looked like Coliseum will have to wait another few months or years.

Unfulfilled Dream 2
So we parked and paid an exorbitant fee. Then walked back to Soong Kee for the porridge.

As we walked up, however, we saw that the stall owner had just about finished packing up. He was sold out for the day.

Great. Expensive parking paid and no porridge to show for it. I was just about to suggest Coliseum again when Lady Fartsalot spotted something a short walk away from Soong Kee.

The Lucky Find

It was a stall. On a sidewalk. It looked like it came from one of those old-timey Chinese shows, and for a minute I wondered if we were looking at a film shoot.

... for a movie about a time when the gangsters were seriously stylish and the guns came with fabulous red tassels.

But there were no cameras around and I figured this was a real food stall.

We walked closer and saw that it was nothing more than a rough table with a simple wooden frame attached, to which has been affixed a few fluorescent light bulbs. The sign was all in Chinese characters but luckily I could recognise most of them. Pig parts soup and chicken rice – the menu was as spartan as the stall.

But, unfortunately for the ladies, the owners' physiques are nowhere near anything resembling a Spartan's.

That doesn’t seem to be a problem for the stall’s customers. There was quite a lot of them, eating at the rickety tables on the sidewalk, or sitting in their big cars stopped next to the stall as they waited for their takeaway orders to be ready.

The stall's 'kitchen extension' was inside the back of this beat-up van.

There were people from all walks of life there… from kids who looked college-aged to an older gentleman with the waistband of his pants pulled up almost to his armpits.

Under the harsh glare of the white lights, a the middle-aged owner was working at a brisk pace, chopping pig parts and chicken, ladling soup into bowls as he sent out a non-stop stream of food from his tiny stall.

This stall looked legit.

We obviously had to try the food, and boy were we happy with what we tasted.

It's usually really hard to be unhappy with any food that contains this much pork.

The mixed pork soup had very generous amounts of meat and organs. The meat was amazing, incredibly tender with a slight springiness to it. I don’t really eat internal organs, but I have it on the highest authority (Lady Fartsalot is a pig parts fanatic) that they are very good as well. The soup had a pretty unique taste: a fairly strong porky flavour with a slight sourness from pickled vegetables. However, she did complain that it wasn't as peppery as she would have liked.

I can't imagine anyone describing this as anything other than 'perfectly cooked'.

The poached chicken was equally great. The stall owner called it ‘smooth chicken’ and he wasn’t exaggerating. The meat was tender and silky, cooked just right and extremely juicy. The flavour was subtle, reminding me of Cantonese cooking, and went well with the white rice. 

Smoother than a black con artist and playa who can sing like Marvin Gaye and play the sax. At the same time.

Of course, being Malaysians, some of us will prefer some chilli dip to give the chicken some kick – no worries they got that too.

And a pretty powerful kick, too. This is spicier than most chicken rice chilli I've encountered.

It turned out to be a great meal – prepared the traditional way, without any frills. Just plain good cooking done by someone who had quite obviously been perfecting his art over many years.

So, so glad that our two previous dinner plans didn’t work out.

Got this shot as business was winding down for the day.

Snack-sized review

Pig parts soup and smooth poached chicken rice served from a tiny standalone stall on a sidewalk in KL. Simple, rustic food that’s made very well and offered at extremely good prices.

Stats

Price: As old-school as the stall’s looks: only about RM15 for a delicious meal for two including drinks.

Hours: Opens about 5:30pm till they run out… which could happen as early as 10pm.

Chong Toong Kee – When slimy is good

No. 5-1, Jalan PJU 8/5I, Damansara Perdana, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

The word ‘slimy’ has been much-maligned. Undeservedly so, in my opinion… especially where food is concerned.

Some of my favourite foods are slimy. Fresh raw oysters and okra stir-fried in sambal, for example… and also the dry Ipoh hor fun at Chong Toong Kee.

Smooth, slippery strands of flat rice noodles covered in a thick, sticky sauce that adds a mild saltiness. Sliced prawns, shredded chicken and scallions finish the dish. The dry hor fun comes with a small bowl of MSG-laden soup that has a few stalks of boiled choy sum floating in it… striving valiantly (and in vain) to raise the nutritional content of the soup. There’s nothing strongly-flavoured in there at all… aside from the small saucer of cili padi and soy sauce. So for me, eating this hor fun is very much a textural experience.

Or, rather, it would have been if it weren't for one of my all-time favourite combos: cili padi and soy sauce. 

When the dish arrives I always start by tossing it like a salad, separating the strands of noodles which tend to clump together, adding spoonfuls of soup as necessary for lubrication. The whole thing slips and slides and squishes as I mix and mix and mix and coat everything in the dark sauce.

It squishes a little more as I pick it up with chopsticks. Then the slippery noodles are in my mouth, the strands so light, paper-thin and soft it almost feels like pudding. I hardly have to chew it before it slides smoothly down my throat. Rinse and repeat. The whole plateful disappears before I know it.

This massive amount of hor fun is actually a 'small' serving. Wonder how many families a 'large' serving can feed.

Aside from the hor fun, I also like their steamed chicken. The meat is tender and juicy and it comes covered in the same dark sauce they put on the hor fun. I normally order a portion as a side order to have with the hor fun.

Lady Fartsalot and I need to get our fix of the stuff regularly, so it’s a good thing that they’ve opened a branch at Damansara Perdana, within walking distance of where we stay. Also, it seems easier to get a table here compared to the one at TTDI – possibly because fewer people know about it.

Right, that’s what we like about Chong Toong Kee. Now we move on to our complaints.

Do note that as we haven’t been to the TTDI branch in a long time, we don’t know how the food is like there. Our complaints are only based on eating at the Damansara Perdana branch.

First, though the texture of the noodles remains consistent, a longstanding gripe of mine is that they could have at least spent 2 seconds to ladle a little soup onto the noodles prior to serving to keep them from drying up and clumping together.

Next, prawns. They’re overcooked, they have little to no flavour, and there are only a few thin slices – cut lengthwise – with every plate of hor fun. Believe it or not, that wasn’t the complaint. No, the complaint is that they’ve removed prawns entirely from the hor fun! They could’ve raised prices to keep the prawns in, or gotten smaller and cheaper prawns. But no, they’ve just dropped the prawns altogether. That’s cold.

They could've cut the veggies out instead, but noooooo... they had to get rid of the prawns.

Last, also prawn-related: the prawn wantans. This is another side dish I like to order, but recently I noticed a disturbing change. There used to be a whole prawn in each wantan. It was about 50% prawn and 50% wantan skin. Now, there are tiny bits of chopped-up prawn that probably didn’t even make up 20% of the total volume of the wantan. And the wantans aren’t exactly cheap: RM7 for 10… and they couldn’t even give me a decent amount of prawns?

It took a great deal of excavation to finally dig these tiny bits of prawn out of the voluminous folds of wantan skin.

So now I have a sort of love-hate relationship with TK Chong & Co. Slippery, slimy noodles are nice… all this corner-cutting most certainly is not.

They still do steady business in spite of their unscrupulous new business practices. Good for them, I suppose... because otherwise I'll have to drive to TTDI to satisfy my slimy hor fun addiction.

Snack-sized review

Ipoh hor fun with a thoroughly enjoyable smooth, slippery texture. Lately, they’ve been cutting corners rather egregiously, but I’d still go for the hor fun and chicken. Damansara Perdana branch is less well-known, so there should be less waiting.

Stats

Hours: Morning till about 3pm.

Price: Not too expensive. You can get a meal for one for around RM10… depends what you order. And how much you eat.

Nameless Bak Kut Teh – A taste 10 years in the making

Black & White Kopitiam, Jalan PJU 8/5c, Damansara Perdana, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

It seems appropriate to begin my first food post with something close to home.

I’ve been regularly getting my bak kut teh fix from this stall for about 10 years.

It would be natural to assume, based on what you know so far – and especially if you’re a fan of kung fu comics – that this is some mind-blowing stuff we’re about to talk about here. A bak kut teh stall so legendary, it does not need anything so commonplace as a name for its hordes of fanatical fans to identify it. A taste that’s been honed and perfected over a decade, probably involving a few years’ meditation in some cave in Pahang. A bak kut teh master of such fearsome skill that other, lesser bak kut teh cooks feel nothing but an intense self-loathing when they compare their mediocre abilities to his; not deeming themselves worthy to even speak his non-name aloud, only to whisper it in hushed and terrified tones. You don’t come here as a customer expecting a good meal, you come here as an unworthy supplicant begging him for the privilege of giving him your money in exchange for a taste of something truly heavenly.

Well, actually, no.

I eat here regularly because it’s within walking distance from where I live, and the guy now reliably does a solid job serving up a bak kut teh meal.

Mind you, it’s not always been like this. When I started eating here, he could be quite inconsistent. Sometimes the soup is too bland, or tastes somehow different from the way it usually does; sometimes the meat has an overpowering porky smell, or is too tough, or has fat that’s too chewy.

But he’s a nice guy and he’s been steadily improving his food over the years. Now, every time I eat there, I can rely on the fat to be deliciously melty, the meat to be tender and the soup to taste the way I expect.

But he still hasn’t bothered to give his stall a name.

Tender meat and melty fat in generous amounts... and just RM10 per person!

All right, I confess that I still add soy sauce to my soup to get it to taste just the way I want, but that’s just because I prefer overly salty food. Regular folks should like it just fine.

Teh-on-teh action: iced Chinese tea is a must for me whenever I have bak kut teh.

Now, the most important question. Should you take a special trip to try it?

Probably not.

But if you’re in the neighbourhood; and it’s a cold night; and you’re in the mood for hot, porky, herbalicious goodness; and you don’t feel up to driving all the way to Kepong or Jinjang or Klang or Puchong or wherever one of those famous bak kut teh places are; this nameless stall will serve up some pretty good stuff to satisfy your craving.

Gotta have rice and cili padi and garlic with bak kut teh. I prefer my garlic with light soy sauce instead of the dark soy sauce that most people seem to favour. 

Bonus: because it really is as anonymous as its non-name suggests, there are no crowds, no long waits for your food, no overpricing and definitely no prima donna attitude from the stall owner.

Pretty good deal, if you ask me.

A picture of the kopitiam and the stall itself. Tried to get a picture of the stall owner too, but doesn't want to be photographed. Maybe he's a secret agent and this bak kut teh thing is just a cover?

Because one can never have too many gratuitous bak kut teh shots, here's one more for the road... :)

Snack-sized review

Good, solid bak kut teh that’s steadily improved over the years. Probably not worth a special trip but if you’re in the neighbourhood and have a hankering for bak kut teh, you can count on this stall to serve up a satisfying meal.

Stats

Hours: About 5pm to 11pm daily (usually closed on Sunday)

Price: About RM10 for one person’s portion including rice, but without dough fritters (yau char kuai)