Motormouth From Ipoh – Asian Food & Travel Blog

This article was first published in Crave section in The Malay Mail Sunday edition. Read it HERE.

The pulut kaya at Keng Nam Coffee Shop is to die for; a very traditional, Hainanese style of kaya that will leave you wanting seconds

One of the perks, if you can call it that, of living in Ipoh is the abundance of great spots for breakfast on Sunday mornings.

It’s true.

Aside from the usual suspects ie. dim sum restaurants, white coffee specialists in Old Town and the super-crowded curry mee (Xin Quan Fang) and hakka mee (Paris Restaurant; formerly Yin Yau Kui) stalls situated a few shops apart on Hugh Low Street in town, there are a few lesser-known names tucked away within the neighbourhood. The kopitiam that introduced me to, and subsequently left me in awe and completely head over heels in love with, pulut kaya is this resilient humble coffee shop named Keng Nam at the end of Cowan Street.

Pulut kaya or steamed glutinous rice served with coconut jam (or kaya, the quintessential Asian jam) was a crowd puller at Keng Nam back in the late 80s up to the early 90s, and still is enticing new fans and loyalists after all these years. I mean, it’s not hard to see why.

The ability to steam the glutinous rice to a perfect texture; neither too hard or soft and sticky is a tricky skill to master but the old lady has never faltered when it comes to sustaining the quality.

Sit back, relax and soak in the Sunday morning atmosphere with a cup of brewed milk tea

And the spoonful of golden, creamy kaya on top of every serving is the icing on the cake. The coconut and egg jam has quite an intense fragrance from the screw pine leaves (pandan) and just the right level of sweetness that leaves one craving for seconds after mopping up a plate in record time. But really, the portion is meant for a light snack than actual breakfast, so feel free to ask for a second helping. Or a third.

No one will judge you.

And it is not particularly hard to imagine why I was so enamoured by the taste when I was a kid back then. Sweet, creamy kaya paired with chewy bits of sweetened glutinous rice. A dream come true for the sweet-toothed, no doubt.

But that’s not their trump card, seriously. At least, not the only one. Read the rest of this entry »

Not the most common sight – To go along with your fiery bowl of curry mee; at Chuan Fatt in Pasir Puteh, Ipoh, the sheer selection and quality of the sides overshadow the noodles sometimes.

Dear readers. I’m sorry. For I have sinned. I tried my best to work out the reviews in between the feasts this past weekend. I was even planning on a live update of review; streaming food shots and stories throughout the last 3 days. But I faltered.

Or should I say, the weather failed me. Ipoh was scarily hot; to a point of getting that feeling of being trapped in a perpetual convection of heat within a cramped oven.

Or maybe it was time. The rush of adrenaline to write between meals tampered by the even more invigorating choice of in-between snacks (you know me, and you’d better know what Ipoh’s famous for now); rendering Motormouth incapable of penning his thoughts. More to nonsensical rants at times.

Or it must have been the hassle of moving between homes and attending to my grandma‘s 49th day prayers.

Nonetheless, if you even had that slight assumption that I had missed a beat on my Ipoh food reviews recently, let me prove you wrong. Let’s start with a curry mee story. Again.  Read the rest of this entry »

The bowl of dry pork noodles (MYR6/USD2 per serving) at OUG’s Sun Sea Restaurant contains all the works of a typical portion; including crispy lard fritters (chu yau char), drizzled generously with lard oil and minced pork patties. But what sets theirs apart from the others are the addition of seafood (squid and shrimps) and cabbage.

It’s not easy searching for a good hawker place for breakfast in Kuala Lumpur. When I punched into Google the search terms “Breakfast in KL” or “Brunch in KL”, a laundry list of breakfast/brunch cafes was displayed. Pages after pages of reviews on all-day breakfast establishments, boutique cafes, gourmet coffee places, confectioneries, etc blinded my sight. So, street food in KL has become ‘yesterday’s story’ for good?

Here I was, just seeking for a humble joint to satisfy the hawker food cravings on a Sunday morning. And I have grown slightly weary of O&S or Annie 1 (don’t get me wrong, they still serve some of the best hawker fares around; though the latter can never be categorised in the same league as conventional hawker stalls).

And then, we thought of Taman OUG (short for Overseas Union Garden) off Old Klang Road; where I once had Hung Kee’s Wantan mee (yup, they’re a branch of the Loke Yew’s classic) and Yang Kee’s beef noodles way back in 2009. And so, we pushed our luck and paid Sun Sea Restaurant; one of the more popular kopitiams around the area a visit.  Read the rest of this entry »