wAntAn productions

I can safely bet that everyone in the restaurant business dreams of being able to run their operation the way Kin Kin does. That is to be able to overcharge everyone, not provide service on any decent level and totally ignore the plight customers who have been waiting for a long time and still have your restaurant packed to the brim. When you're famous you can even get away with declining food quality.

So what's chilli pan mee exactly? It's basically dry pan mee smothered with the usual dark sauce. The special ingredient here is the chilli paste that you mix with the pan mee. They place tubs of chilli paste on each table so you can put as much as you like. However the chilli paste is really spicy so don't try to be a hero and put too much. The noodles are also topped with an egg. The egg is half cooked so you can poke the egg yolk and mix it along with the noodles. Let me tell you the taste is heavenly!

BUT!!!!!

I was actually talking about my first visit there two or three years ago. When I revisited them recently their service has not improved but with the business they get in spite of their less than friendly attitude they will never be motivated to improve. Malaysians are a forgiving lot when it comes to food.

The other really disappointing thing is that they totally removed all the chilli paste tubs from customer's tables. I believe they also increased their prices. That means they now give you less chilli paste and charge you more for it... brilliant!

Another thing I found lacking was that my egg was overcooked! The yolk was hard which meant I was not able to mix it with my noodles therefore totally negating the eggy noodle experience... sigh.

Despite all that they are still the only place I know that serves this unique style of pan mee. Although they are not as good as they were they are still quite good. Just don't expect to be treated well... oh and don't wait for them to serve you drinks. Just grab the cans from the fridge yourself.

One other thing I forgot to mention, their serving is really small so one bowl is usually not enough. Save yourself some time and don't try to order a big serving because they only have one size and that size is called tiny! If you're hungry try having 2 or even 3 bowls.

Also check out:

• Boredworkers.com >> Restoran Kin Kin - Spicy Pan Mee
• The Malaysian Food Review: Chilli Pan Mee - Restoran Kin Kin - Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman
• Eat First Think Later: Restaurant Kin Kin (Pan Mee)
• KY eats - Kin Kin Chili Pan Mee
  

Caught this while I was around Chow Kit. This might possibly be the biggest poster that our Prime Minister and his deputy has ever been in. Anyone checked with the Malaysia Book of Records?

What's with all the Station One Restaurants popping up all over KL? They're everywhere. There's two in Puchong alone! The one we tried was the new branch at Puchong Jaya. It's located on the row of shops behind Maybank, facing away from the main road. The other Puchong branch is in Bandar Puteri Puchong. I have not heard many good things about this place but curiosity got the better of me.

The Pooh AdventureFEST was held in the Exhibition Hall at Mid Valley Megamall. Yesterday was the final day of its run. Basically it's nothing more than an exercise in pushing Disney merchandise. There was hardly any adventure to speak of. We were there to see Winnie the Pooh in action but too bad because they didn't put up any kind of show. However we managed to get our picture taken with the famous honey bear and his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood.

I don't think it was very widely reported but for a few hours on Friday evening our beloved capitol city Kuala Lumpur became a little like Venice in Italy. I took this scene right outside my office. It was terrible. The water level kept rising. My workplace was in danger of getting flooded. In fact we evacuated all the computers on the ground floor to the higher floors. I heard the Putra LRT service was shut down. Strangely there was absolutely no warning when the Klang river burst its banks. According to my Project Manager the last time KL was seriously flooded she could hear the sound of sirens blaring through the evening.

If you've been following this blog for some time you might remember the Nissin Dog and Panda Cup Noodles. Today we follow up with Nisssin's Fox and Pig Cup Noodles!

So what's Fox and Pig? Pork may be a common meat but fox meat certainly isn't. However there's no need to worry as there isn't actually any real meat in this! The Fox and Pig refers to the cute head figures you get along with the seasoning.



The "Heads" are tastless and serve no purpose other than to make the noodles look cute. The only distinguishing feature between the Fox and Pig noodles is the soup. The Pig one comes with an aromatic curry flavour while the Fox one is simply a weird tasting soup. I liked the Pig noodles but I didn't finish the Fox noodles.

I have no idea if you can still find this product on store shelves as I bought them so long ago but if you want to try your luck you can try finding them in Jusco supermarkets.

There's this place in KL Town located in an alleyway hidden behind the Hon Ming Textiles building. In Cantonese this place is called Dai She Tau which means Big Tree. There's a restaurant there named Sang Kee which has been dishing out Sang Har Meen (Noodles with Fresh Water Prawns) ever since I was a kid. I remember my mother bringing me there once when I was very young... probably while I was still studying in primary school at St. John's.

Recently I had the chance to revisit them and I was quite impressed with their Sang Har Meen.


Typically the prawns that come with Sang Har Meen are huge fresh water prawns. Because it's so big the prawns are very meaty. Unfortunately they are also very pricey! Before I ordered I had to clarify with the waitress on the price of the prawns because if you're not careful you will really spend a hell of a lot of money on them. The waitress told me a single prawn would typically cost me something like RM20 so I only ordered a single prawn :P Anyways it was only me and ST eating so a single prawn is really quite enough. Besides we also ordered another noodle dish.

They score good marks with the freshness of the prawn... kudos to them for that. However the great thing about the Sang Har Meen isn't really in the prawn itself. Instead it's in the sauce! The prawn is served on top of a yee mee braised with some thick eggy sauce. The best part of the sauce is that the egg is semi cooked. After mixing the egg thoroughly with the sauce you something that's really rich tasting. Who doesn't love eggy sauces?

Every once in a while I like to drop by at Koong Woh Tong for their Guai Ling Go (Herbal Jelly). Nowadays they have branches all over KL.. the one where this picture was taken was in Mid Valley Megamall.

What's Guai Ling Go? Directly translated the three Cantonese words can be taken to mean Tortoise Jelly in English and it is called so because of the special ingredient used to prepare the jelly and give it its distinctive dark colour and bitter taste. Yup! You guessed it right. It's ground tortoise shells (which goes a long way to explain why it's usually so expensive).

Continuing from yesterday's post here are the pictures of Lover's Bridge where the Ocen Seafood Restaurant is located.

As promised yesterday here's the food blog on seafood at Sepang! We went to a place called Tanjung Sepat which had this jetty by the sea and a few restaurants in the area. I think the Jetty was called Lover's Bridge or something like that (pics coming up tomorrow). The one recommended by our Sepang resident was Ocen Seafood Restaurant which a restaurant built on stilts and is located nearest to the Jetty. In fact the restaurant has a pretty good view of the jetty. It's not exactly a romantic view though :)

Ocen Seafood Restaurant is a typical Chinese style seafood restaurant. I believe there are similar restaurants in Klang (which I've been to when I was much younger). On to the food.


This variation of lala has a distinct white shell. It's supposed to be a specialty of this region. Tastes like most lala does. They used a lot of Chinese cooking wine for this dish which gave it a very strong taste.


Crabs fried with lots of onions and dried chillies. Pretty standard fare actually.


The standout dish of the night. I have not tried Ho Chien made this way before. Cooked in a sizzling hot plate with lots of oysters this dish was quite impressive. A definite recommendation.


You standard battered fried Sotong. Well done. Sufficiently crispy and tasty.


This one is actually more of a soup than the normal type of Claypot Tauhu. The way it's prepared is reminicent of Sharks Fin Soup. Very nice.


Wow... the lobsters here are so cheap! Too bad the only way they cook their lobsters are by steaming it. I would have preferred it baked with cheese and garlic. I didn't quite enjoy the way the lobster was cooked but thumbs up for the freshness. In fact everything we ate that night was fresh.

Except for the lobster everything else isn't really that cheap. The taste isn't outstanding either. However it's fun to take a drive to see the sights and get away from the hustle and bustle of KL city once in a while.

Ocen Seafood Restaurant,
Lot 109, Jalan Laut,
42800 Tanjong Sepat,
Kuala Langat,
Selangor Dahrul Ehsan.
Tel: 603-3197 4443

I went for a trip to Sepang yesterday for good and cheap seafood (food blog coming up tomorrow). Along the way we took a detour to the Sepang Gold Coast to take a look.

Yesterday I rushed off from work and headed straight away to the Putra LRT where I spent half an hour acting as a human sardine along with a few hundred other passengers in the can we conventionally call a train until I got off at the Kelana Jaya station to meet ST. Why the rush? ST and her colleagues were going to Klang for seafood and I was invited!

Her colleague Ken drove us there in his white Kelisa and the guy was driving close to 160km/h... ermm... actually it was because his speedometer was broken and highly inaccurate :) He was probably driving at 80 or thereabouts. A short while later we arrived at our destination but I couldn't quite believe we had arrived. I imagined we were going to some famous seafood restaurant for dinner but as it turned out our destination was a small restaurant operating from a cramped coffeeshop with a funny name located in the middle of Klang town (it's right opposite Kamdar).


We arrived at about 7.30pm and the place was getting really packed. In fact we had to sit at tables across the street from the restaurant. So this guy came up to take our orders. He told us all the food names in broken Hokkien and spoke little of other languages. We ended up taking a long time to order. Ken ordered some of their signature dishes followed by some recommendations from our waiter. This is definitely a popular place to eat with the locals which wasn't very good for us because we had to wait very long to get our food served and everytime we asked a waiter about our food they would just laugh it off!


Having waited so long we were glad that our food finally arrived. The Steamed Lala was heavenly although the lalas were rather smallish. The lala is steamed with Chinese cooking wine with ginger strips and a healthy dose of crunchy fried garlic. It's the garlic that makes this dish so wonderful.

Another recommendation is the Tapioca Noodles you see in the background of the picture. I believe this is a uniquely Hokkien noodle. Thick noodles made from tapioca flour and cooked ala Hokkien Char (Fried Hokkien Noodle style). The noodles were quite unique. The texture was a little springy and the taste is very different from the usual yellow noodles.


Lots of Mantis Prawns. So much that you can't actually see the beehoon at the bottom. However taste wise this dish was not great. Somehow the Mantis Prawns and the beehoon does not mix and match well with each other.

I'll be trying out a new feature on wAntAn productions... an interactive satellite map of the reviewed food places. You can try it out yourself by following these steps. I don't think I'll be putting them into all the future postings... just those that I am able to locate.

There are two places in KL which I always find myself getting lost in; Ampang and Cheras so I usually avoid going there without any good reason. Well two Fridays back I definitely had a good reason to go to Cheras. It was to try out Blue Dragon, a Thai restaurant that my colleague raves about and indeed they are good (but quite pricey!).

The pictures aren't very good because they were taken with very low light. In fact Blue Dragon is possibly the darkest restaurant I have ever dined in. Great for them because it saves them on the electricity and air conditioning bills (less light means less heat) but not so good for me because I had a hard time seeing what I was eating.


This was absolutely the best pineapple fried rice I have ever tasted and if you don't agree well then you MUST tell me where I can find even better :) Their pineapple fried rice was very fragrant. The rice was well cooked and every bite emitted a savoury flavour of curry. This dish gets some points for being served within a pineapple as well (though I know most if not all Thai restaurants serve it this way). I wonder if they recycle the pineapple for the next person who orders this dish? :)


I didn't really like this... would have preferred some spicy kangkung.


The pandan chicken was not bad... very flavourful thanks to the marinate and very aromatic thanks to the pandan leaves.


The tom yam was excellent. It was probably one of the thickest tom yam soup I have ever had. It was sufficiently spicy and had a great deal of ingredients in it. This one's a definite recommendation.


I was introduced to Green Curry by my father years ago and have liked it ever since. Green curry is a sweet type of curry. The one that Blue Dragon serves is very decent.


Yikes... I hated this dish. I don't think the dried sotong (a.k.a. squid, those brown strips on the dish) are a good match for the raw mangoes. Is this how the Thai Mango Salad is commonly served?

Well Blue Dragon has its ups and downs. Some items are great and some items... well I just didn't like them at all. If you do go, make sure you have the Pineapple Fried Rice and the Tom Yam. You can get a 10% discount card when you pay... simply ask for one.

Blue Dragon is located at:

60, Jalan 5/101C,
Off Jalan Kaskas,
Taman Cheras (Commercial Center),
56100 Kuala Lumpur.

Tel: 603-9132 9255

---

Also check out:

• Some1's Voice out There: Lunch @ Blue Dragon, Cheras
  

This happened a few weeks back... some colleagues and myself were having an intense craving for Bak Kut Teh. However we balked at the prospect of driving all the way down to Klang to sample the delicious herbal soup dish. Just as well because it's not impossible to find good BKT in the Klang Valley. Today wAntAn productions brings you to a very decent BKT place located in Sungai Way.

For the uninitiated, BKT is a very delightful concoction of pork (various meat cuts and/or internal organs) with a variety of mushrooms and dried bean curds thrown in for good measure served with an aromatic herbal soup base. Convention dictates BKT to be eaten with rice although a niche has developed whereby people eat them with noodles. A required add on for most BKT lovers is the Yau Jar Gwai which is basically fried dough sticks. Interesting note: translated literally the words Yau Jar Gwai mean Oil Fried Ghost!

There's a famous BKT shop in Sungai Way overlooking the Indian temple that people call Ah Sang Bak Kut Teh but that's not the one we're talking about today. Instead this place is located nearby Ah Sang. To get there go down the hill from where Ah Sang is. Make a turn on the first left turning and you will see the BKT shop on your right shortly. This BKT place is actually located inside a typical new village house. They converted the driveway into a restaurant. I don't know what it's called since I can't read Chinese but from what I know there are only two BKT places in Sungai Way so it should be easy enough to find.

Nothing really interesting actually. This post is specifcally for those who listen to My FM (101.8 in the Klang Valley) but don't know the DJs look like. Well from left is William Sun who sometimes co hosts the evening show with Wan Wai Fun (who did not attend the event). Next to him is Vivian Tok who does the night shows. Eric Ma and Phoebe are next and they co host the afternoon show. The last one is Gan Mei Yan who co hosts the very popular morning show with Jack Lim (also not in the picture). They were throwing some free gifts around but they didn't throw a single one in my direction!!!

Koon Kee is located on Jalan Hang Lekir (nearby Petaling Street) which is still popularly called by its old name, Cecil Street. Cecil Street also happens to be the home of some of the more famous Chinese stalls in KL such as the Hokkien Noodles at the crossroads, the grilled fish stall, the air mata kucing stall and the porridge stall (there's actually a few more).

Koon Kee is probably the most famous stall selling wan tan noodles in the whole of Kuala Lumpur. The shop itself is nothing fancy though. Despite being in operation for probably over two dozen years they are still located in their original old, cramped and dilapidated shop which isn't actually a bad thing because they have really maintained their old school charm complete with dirty floors, men cooking in singlets and the obligatory rude waiter :) In fact they are affectionately described as the wan tan noodle stall operating from within a hole in a wall.

I've always had fond memories of Koon Kee because my grandmother would often pack home some Koon Kee noodles and bring them back for me to enjoy (that and the killer Chee Cheong Fun from the stall nearby Koon Kee). I did not like their wan tan back then because they contained salted fish but it's a taste that I've acquired over the years.

It's been some years since I've visited Koon Kee but I took the chance to do so yesterday during lunch. It was just the way I remembered them. Delicious but the serving has shrunk somewhat. I ordered a large helping plus a cooling sugarcane drink and the total bill came up to RM5.30. I wouldn't call it expensive because that's what I usually pay for lunch anyways. It's true that they used to be expensive but the prices of all the other restaurants have gone up while they've retained their priceline so they're at the median now.

The wan tan noodles were very nice. They were fine enough and tasted like they are made fresh with no trace of boric acid. I didn't quite like all the fat on their Char Siew but I think it's possible to order the less fatty cuts. I loved their wan tan. Thanks to the salted fish in the stuffing it had a distinctively aromatic taste. Unfortunately they were really small and I only got two measly pieces with my meal. The next time I go I'll probably order an extra bowl of wan tans or try out their sui kows.

Also check out:

• Acrix69 - Another Boring Blog!: Kun Kei Konlo Mee
• everything pretty*: the past week
  

Ever wondered how they disposed of all the stuff they built up for the Lantern Carnival in Bukit Jalil? Well here's what they did to some of the stuff; irresponsible open burning.

This might be of interest to those who stay near Old Klang Road... Jusco has kinda opened up in the old Pearl Point. I say kinda because it's not the full Jusco. Instead it's called J-One and it's only the Jusco Supermarket. However the whole place has been given a much needed facelift and new vendors have moved in. There's even a new food court now (located on the very top floor) and just the other day we tried the Taiwan Beef Noodle stall.


The Taiwan Beef Noodle stall like its name implies specialises in selling Beef Noodles Taiwan style. They've got a few varieties of Beef Noodles plus they also sell some Taiwanese pancakes. The one we tried was the Beef Noodle in Soup. It was very decent. The chunks of beef provided were delicious and they managed to put in the flavourful beef aroma into the soup. However at RM6.50 they could have provided more. Look at the picture, doesn't look very filling does it?