Motormouth From Ipoh – Asian Food & Travel Blog

How Beautiful Are They? Don’t this make you feel a little bit home sick (if you are oversea)?

The annual homecoming for the Mooncake Festival or more righteously known as Mid-Autumn Festival has always borne fruit in terms of discovering or rediscovering one-of-a-kind mooncake experience. The sheer fact that Ipoh is a treasure trove of nostalgic delights packed into small parcels in the nooks and corners of the laidback city makes it all so worthwhile to come back once a year; and surprise myself with new finds.

And no, I don’t fancy the commercial brands that are charging an arm and a leg for an ultra-sweetened, mass-manufactured, machine-made mooncake.

Call me old school, staunch/stubborn egoist or plain Motormouth, if you will. I love my mooncakes that come in irregular shapes; the paste not sweetened to an artificially insulin-deprived level, and packaging without the fancy golden thread or sparkling and glossy that justifies the MYR15++ per piece charge.

Okay, maybe sometimes. But when I have a choice, I revisit places like Ching Han Guan, Sin Eng Heong, Hoong Tho or Ming Yue Confectionery. Sounds alien to you? Read on. And find out about the delectable BBQ Meat Mooncake (also known as bak kwa or chu yuk korn).

Ching Han Guan has renovated their premise; turning it into a proper confectionery with air-conditioning (don’t frown yet, the authentic elements are still there). Surprisingly (or maybe not), Guan Heong opposite of this sports almost the same colour signboard, vaguely familiar logo, and well, renovated their shop too. Not sure who did it first, but it gets a bit confusing especially for first timers.

Last year I wrote about Ipoh Street Arts and the Cempedak Mooncake from Hoong Tho. Time flies and fast forward 12 months later, many things have changed in my life.

Here I am in Singapore now, writing about home and this marks the first Mooncake Festival in my life where I am not able to share a piece of mooncake with my Grandma, and joke about her blood glucose level soaring sky high. And then she would almost always fed Lulu, our golden retriever with a piece or two. Just to share the guilt, maybe.

Teochew Walnut Mooncake has a fabulous flaky pastry studded with crunchy ‘kuaci’ and bites of walnut within the paste.

The one and only, BBQ Meat Mooncake from Ching Han Guan (MYR10.80 each) – A strangely congruous blend of lotus paste and finely-chopped bak kwa (or BBQ pork meat) promising an interesting fusion of sweet and savoury; packed into the beautiful brown mooncake skin. If you have calories to spare for only ONE piece of mooncake, make sure it’s for this one.

While this year we did not fight with the crowd (or the owners) of Ming Yue Confectionery in Pasir Pinji opposite of Tuck Kee Restaurant, Mum did buy the elusive pineapple mooncake biscuits from the maker that does not take orders aside from close friends or relatives. Go figure.

And since I had a few days to spare in Ipoh after a good two months away, I completely engaged myself in very-touristy activities and visited the biscuit shops, dim sum restaurants and even bean sprouts chicken places.

A month or so before Mid-Autumn Festival (which falls on next Monday, if I remember correctly), the traditional confectioneries in Ipoh would be having a whale of a time taking orders from near and far, baking mooncakes for sale prior to the season, and about a week or so before the actual day, almost all of the shops would ceased making their trademark biscuits like meat floss biscuits from Ching Han Guan or kaya puffs from Sin Eng Heong.

It is understandable though. Don’t lose your temper just yet.

These are traditional shops focusing on hand made biscuits; and with limited number of hands kneading the dough, cooking the fillings and shaping the end products, how can one expects them to diversify into making hundreds or thousands of mooncakes, and yet still need to produce top quality kaya puffs or meat floss biscuits?

But don’t roll on the floor and throw tantrum, please.

They will be back to making what they do best in a week from now. Guaranteed.

Shanghai Mooncake from Oversea Restaurant; okay I lied. This is the ONLY commercialized (if you can consider this that) mooncake that I still crave for even after all these years. And yeah, with 10% discount, this came to about MYR14 each.

But let me draw your attention back to the BBQ Meat Mooncake this year from Ching Han Guan.

I tried a slice; and instantly got hooked.

The blend of sweet, smooth lotus paste with chewy bites of BBQ meat was a clash of texture and flavours, yet the synergy was beyond words. I could down an entire piece of this at one go, had it not been Lulu creeping up and nudging her nose for a slice.

A few friends tried and bought a few, Mum bought for her colleagues and such, and in the end, the effect got viral pretty quick.

So addictive was this that most ended up with a box of 4’s to bring home, share with friends and family members or with fellow workers.

I believe so lah … unless everyone too paiseh to admit and ended up hoarding half a dozen or so for themselves!

If you have the patience to queue for up to an hour at times, please be my guest. Ming Yue bakes cheap but good quality mooncakes. Try their 5 Yan (5 kernels) or Foh Tui (Ham), or even white lotus mooncakes. Read more about them HERE.

Well, at the end of the day, it’s the company that matters.

Indulging in mooncakes washed down with a cup of Chinese tea, gathering with family members and admiring the beautiful, hypnotic sight of the full moon while the kids run about with their lanterns and lighting candles …. this may seem old fashioned and well, out of place in a metropolitan like KL or even Singapore.

But coming from Ipoh; Pasir Puteh to be exact, these are all priceless memories from my younger days of growing up playing with lanterns and candles, not fiddling with tablets or smartphones during the Mid-Autumn prayers.

Happy Mooncake Festival dear readers, from wherever you are.

Read more about Ching Han Guan HERE, and find out what is Lap Bia mooncake and the fried mini yam mooncakes.
Hoong Tho is an old restaurant in old town that not only whips up a culinary storm with their fried noodles and wanton, but also the cempedak cake and mooncakes.
Ming Yue is the one with mad queue during the season, within walking distance from Tuck Kee and Big Tree Foot in Pasir Pinji.
Sin Eng Heong makes better kaya puffs than mooncakes, in my humble opinion, but that does not stop the crowd from coming!
Oversea Restaurant is a famous name for mooncakes, but have you tried their Shanghai mooncake?