Breakfast, Tea and Dinner @ Penang

Let’s start with breakfast in Bukit Mertajam Morning market

PW decide to take me to the BM morning market for breakfast as there were some stalls that she would like me to try out

 Wantan Noodles – this was a popular stall  and it was a long long wait for the noodles to arrive . The noodles was like the Sarawak version where you get the noodles  in colourless gravy instead of the blackish soy sauce/thick soy sauce gravy  . The noodles also came with slices of char siew ( not bad, rather tasty) , vegetables and some wantan which were smooth and tasty. The texture of the noodles was good but it had gotten a bit sticky ( dry), at which point, I would normally wet the noodles with some soup but interestingly  there were no accompanying soup with the noodles.

 

Curry mee (RM3.50) – the gravy although light was very aromatic, the lemak-ness /santan ( coconut milk) was not strong, but this was more than compensated by the layers and layers of flavours from the soup. Nice…

 

Continuing with   – Tea Break :- popiah ( spring roll)  and rojak at BM

 We wanted to have something light between lunch and dinner-  and  popiah seemed to fit the bill pretty well. PW heard from a colleague that there is this insanely popular popiah stall in BM, we headed off to BM

The area taken up by the popiah seller 麗光薄餅plus another a rojak stall plus a stall selling drinks – which was at a junction , wasn’t big. And when we arrived ( about 2:30 ish) there were already a crowd gathered around the popiah stall. Seeing is believing :  we heard orders for 12, 18 and up to 20 pieces of popiah, most were takeaways, but there were a few eat-ins like us as well. We ordered 2 piece per person It was a long long wait…Auntie sells laksa too but as she was short of 1 helper for that day, only popiah was on the menu

 

While waiting – we ordered rojak  (RM3) – this was ok although the gravy was a slightly sweet.

 

The stall where the rojak came from : ( Rojak Orang Hitam Putih -translated : Black White Man Rojak) please ask  BM dwellers for this rojak battle of names  :D

After about 45 mins, the popiah (RM1/ pc) arrived…

 

The popiah skin was good – soft and thin, the filings : mengkuang shreds ,  taugeh ( bean sprouts) and lettuce –only had very light flavourings, which to me was rather bland and felt like water-ed down popiah. Conclusion : I may be wrong..but I do not know what the hype is all about.

Location : Jalan Bunga Raya , near the market place, try to locate Ideal Tailor in BM and you should see the popiah  stall a few doors away. ( pix below taken in the morning, before biz commenced)

Dinner at Jalan Raja Uda

Jln Raja Uda is food, food is Jln Raja Uda…not an exaggeration …there’s too much of food eateries at Jln Raja Uda.

#1 Curry Mee

This must be one famous stall in Prai as when curry mee is mentioned- it’s associated with ‘you mean the one at Raja Uda ?’

This is the stall where you get Curry Mee with  add-ons… and there are plenty of add ons to select from –chicken, fishballs, prawns, sotong, pork balls, vegetable, chicken feet..etc etc…

Actually horr..the serving for the curry mee is rather small and not that much of  the ingredients  too , so one would really have to order the add-ons in order to fill up the empty spaces in ones belly. I find that the taste of the curry mee was not bad ( but not outstanding either ), although the add-ons were a novelty , we ordered  : chicken feet ( highly recommended) was good, curry chicken ( not bad) , fish balls ( ok lah)

 

In pix above : Bottom two bowls are the main curry mee ( with cubes and cubes of jelly-ish pork blood) and the top bowl was our ‘add-ons’

 Seafood porridge /noodles

This seafood porridge stall ( not at same location as curry mee stall above) is another one famous stall at Jalan Raja Uda, where you can get to select the seafood that you what and have it cooked either in porridge or noodles.

The available selection ( not limited to seafood)  : variety of fishballs, meatballs, prawns, variety of sotong, fish meat, mushroom, pork liver , spoilt for choice

 

PW had noodles :

 

And I had porridge with fishballs, mincemeatballs and fishmeat…the verdict — I can fully understand why this stall is so popular. This was truly enjoyable. Double yum

the stall :

Restoran Sun Huat Kee @ Bangsar

Ever since reading about Restoran Sun Huat Kee which was featured in Food Trails ( in The Star), I have been looking forward to eating that bowl of curry laksa and also having a plate of  Soo Kee beef noodles (without having to go to Jalan Imbi)

Sun Huat Kee is a kopitiam with many stalls selling various kinda food, but since it’s Bangsar we are talking about, it’s a  higher end kinda kopitiam establishment , nicer tables and chairs, nicer looking stalls and probably nicer looking customers 

 I was torn between having curry laksa or the beef noodles, but since my fellow diner does not eat beef, guess that meant I was having Moo-moo for lunch ( well, the advantage was, I do not have to share my food)

Tak Kee curry laksa ( RM5.50), what is not to like about curry laksa ?  well, mainly is the guilt, I guess , about consuming santan, secondly- global warming and thirdly..err..ok, eat first, think later. Co-inhabiting the bowl with the noodles : cockles, long bean, brinjal, taugeh, taufu pok, fu pei ( bean curd skin) and chicken. And the star of the bowl- the gravy. Rich santan , fragrant and not too heavy..ahh…very nice, the gravy struck me as being very refined and elegant.. elegant gravy, huh ? 

Jalan Imbi Soo Kee ( tai shue tou) beef noodles, this was full  of promise ( especially at the price tag of RM8). The first spoonful, hmmm.. good wok hei (  the wok power), second spoonful, umm..a bit tasteless one gehh ? can’t be mahh…try another spoonful, yes, still tasteless, add more soy sauce, nope, doesn’t help, dumped the whole saucer of soy sauce into the noodles, nope , doesn’t help. This was a real disappointment, I struggled to finished the rather big serving of noodles and the notion of admitting defeat crossed my mind many times, but I must prevail (and not waste that hard earned RM8 ) . Maybe the chef forgot to add something in this particular bowl of noodles ? The only consolation was that the beef was tender and springy.

Overall, good curry laksa and sadly, bad experience of beef noodles, might return to try out the fish ball noodles and meat balls noodles which seemed  to be rather popular at the time of our visit.

 

Location :

 Lucky Garden, Bangsar

 Sun Huat Kee is Next to  Alliance Bank

Curry Mee -Restaurant Yat Yat Lai 日日利茶餐室@Kuchai Lama

Yat Yat Lai ( YYL)  was recommended by Wikipedia Lim who gets his Curry Mee fix here. YYL is eclipsed by Kim Hin dimsum which is a door away, you can read about my visit to Kim Hin by clicking  here.  . The crowd at Kim Hin seemed so exaggerated, , I estimated  > 30 people waiting for tables. This is crazy !! Anyway, back to YYL …

When we approached the counter to order, we were short of being shoo-ed away by the lady boss who asked us to take a seat and someone will come around and take our orders..oh..pardon me ma’am, I don’t know the rules lah.

Eventually the man boss came to our table for the orders, we ordered ’1 dry and 1 wet’ both mee hoon + mee. And we kept ourselves occupied with the TV showing HK series with  a very young Simon Yam acting in it… that era where the ladies had big frizzy hair, big shoulder pads

After a few minutes, Man boss spoke to us from the counter, ‘ not enough meat balls for 2 bowls, only enough to make for  1 bowl’..and only then it dawn on me ( yes, I am not very quick witted most of the time) that they serve other things and not just curry mee. So, I pretend to be accommodating and ok’ed the order and changed the other order to ‘dry curry mee’.

The pork ball noodles turned out to be pretty good, the soup was sweet and the pork balls crunchy and err..’porky’. (The other dishes served are fish balls noodles- and according to Wikipedia Lim, is not too bad as well.)

The dried curry mee arrived in 2 portion, the noodles and the chicken curry in separate bowls. The gravy was yumyum, the chicken was tender and the potatoes were soft and mushy. Thumbs up for curry mee.  You can also order the soupy mee

Later when we were  settling  our bill at the counter, I asked the lady boss permission to take pictures of the counter ( I had my sights set on the the big pot of curry with  the taufu pok swimming in the rich red gravy) and lady boss seemed very suspicious of this and was asking me my purpose to take the pictures, before I could reply , I  was rudely  interrupted by the man boss who said to his wife ‘ ignore her, listen to me, did table xx order mee hoon or…’ OUCH…so, I had to say goodbye to the swimming taufu-pok and took a picture of the menu/ price list instead lah..

Dry curry mee : RM4.30 big, RM3.80 small

Pork ball noodles : RM4.50(b), RM4.00 (s)

Fried mince meat noodles : RM4.50(b), RM4.00 (s)

Fish ball noodles : RM4.00 (s)

Restaurant Yat Yat Lei

Sri Desa Entrepreneur Park, Kuchai Lama ,

Go straight into Kuchai Entepreneur Park shophouse , YYL is at the row of shophouses just after  Shell . Opposite is Sri Desa Condominium.