One day, I was having a coffee and sharing a table with a mother and her daughter at a kopitiam. (In JB, it is perfectly normal to share tables with strangers at busy kopitiams.) I can't help but overhear their discussion on their favourite mee hoon kueh shops. I can't help but chipped in my comments too and we had a nice conversation ☻
The mum's favourite is Yi Bao in Taman Maju Jaya. I have eaten at Yi Bao before and it was indeed good.
The daughter said her favourite is in Taman Sentosa and she added that this shop was just a push cart stall when it started business in the 1980s. She remembered that even as a push cart stall, customers willingly waited 45 minutes for their mee hoon kueh.
So with this piece of information, I tracked down this shop along Jalan Sutera in Taman Sentosa. It has a picture of a push cart on its sign board proudly declaring its humble beginnings.
This bowl of mee hoon kueh looks brimming over with ingredients. It is actually not the usual serving. I went a little overboard that day and ordered additional fish balls, pork balls, sayur manis and egg.
Let's start with the kueh. The dough here is hand kneaded and the kueh is manually stretched and pinched. So the kueh comes in irregular shapes and varying thickness - don't expect those ultra thin, perfect squares of machine made ones. I like my kueh the old fashioned way.
The soup made from pork bones and anchovies is naturally sweet and fragrant with a strong anchovy flavour. It appears cloudy indicating the generous amount of ingredients used to brew the broth. It feels light to the tastebuds and is not oily. I drank up my whole bowl and did not have any aftertaste or feel thirsty afterwards. A sign that it is an all natural soup with little or no artificial taste boosters.
Besides the kueh and the soup, the next crucial element in good mee hoon kueh is the anchovies (ikan bilis in Malay). The anchovies here are fragrant, sweet, crunchy and have good bite. They are not the gritty, salty and hard type we sometimes get elsewhere.
This perfectly round fish ball is factory made. Tasty and springy but without the feel and flavour of hand made balls.
Nice, tasty pork ball.
These chopped chili paddies are HOT!
The chili really spices up the kueh. I love it ☻
Definitely one of my favourite mee hoon kueh shops. Old style 古早 - I love that ☻
Restaurant name: Kedai Makanan Mee Hoon Kueh
Address: 56, Jalan Sutera, Taman Sentosa
GPS: 1.493049,103.771952
Hours: 1:00pm to 9:00pm
Non Halal
Date visited: 3 Feb 2012
Hi JK. Thank you so much for having this blog. I've been browsing through your blog to find out things to eat before lunch hour everyday. Today I decided to take the chance to visit this shop, even though the last time you tried it was last two years (my colleague told me that this was once very famous, but recently they don't go anymore because "very dirty"). I must say that I'm very happy to have found this place because 1) The mee hoon kueh is still very traditional ie, not those machine-made where every piece is consistently "fat" and of the same size. This one is irregular just like a mee hoon kueh should be (using hands) and 2) The sambal belacan was soo good, reminds me of a stall that I really liked last time in Imbi, KL. I never come across another mee hoon kueh stall that serve this type of sambal belacan in JB. So, yes, even though the restaurant smells like cockroach now, I would still patron this shop again. I can still sit outside and enjoy the mee hoon kueh, without the cockroach smell!
ReplyDeleteShop has moved, soon cafe has taken over the lot.
ReplyDeleteMove to where?
DeleteMoved to: 4, Jalan Molek 2/2, Taman Molek, 81100 Johor Bahru
ReplyDelete