Ah Koong Fishball Noodle is like an old family friend. It was my father, a true Johor kaki, who first brought me to the restaurant in Taman Sentosa in 1990 JB. Often, when I was at work, my dad would bring my toddlers from Singapore to JB for day trips. Ah Koong Fishball was a regular stopover. My dad and the kids like the comfortable environment and the fried fish cake.
When we were living in KL in 2000s, we often went to Ah Koong's Pudu branch. I remembered it as the "McDonalds of fishball noodles" as it was a place to keep the kids happy. The fried fish cake was their happy meal. Over the last decade, I stopped going to Ah Koong as I searched for new food adventures in JB - I took Ah Koong for granted and we grew distant. I even thought it had grown a bit boring, too mainstream and touristy.
After the eighth stop of our whole day JB food trail today, I decided to pull over at Ah Koong because it was a comfortable place to cool our heels and give our tummies a break before our final food stop. We got a bit of time to kill before the next restaurant (Ah Kaw) opens for dinner. I thought a nibble of Ah Koong's fried fish cake would keep my food trail buddies happy while we waited in air con comfort with free (working) WiFi
Ah Koong hasn't changed much since the 1990s - bright, clean, neat and family friendly. And, the air conditioned restaurant seemed even more busy today than before.
Tan Ooi Koong helped his dad ran a street side fishball noodle stall which the senior Tan founded in 1975 in old downtown JB's Pasar Kia or "Little Market". Tan Ooi Koong founded this modern, air conditioned Ah Koong outlet in 1987 which was a bold move at that time. It turned out a huge success, spawning Ah Koong outlets around Malaysia, and even Singapore.
Ah Koong brought fast food efficiency to his traditional fishball noodle business. Customers order their food outside at the front, and the staff will serve the cooked food at the tables inside.
Ah Koong offers lots of house made sides to go with their fishball noodles. There's yong tau foo pieces filled with fish paste (surimi), oysters, shellfish, fresh fish, fresh greens, tofu and also their signature fried fish cake.
When I asked buddies what would they like, what I heard sounded like pleas for mercy "I don't want, I don't want, very full already.... " 😂
Whatever lah... but fried fish cake is a must. We can nibble at freshly fried fish cakes until our next food destination is opened.
(Four of us) I ordered a 1 person set which comes with noodles, a bowl of soup with fishballs etc, and one piece of fried fish cake (price RM15 with a drink included). For good measure, I also ordered two additional pieces of fried fish cakes. If buddies don't eat, I eat loh....
I was delighted with Ah Koong's mee pok noodles. I was surprised actually. One of the reasons why I haven't been back to Ah Koong for a decade was because the generic noodles tended to be overcooked and the sauce tasted flat.
But, today the mee pok was done beautifully al dente and the sauce was quite punchy savoury spicy with underlying lard taste. The lard also greased the noodles well, making them slurpy smooth. This would rank with the best mee pok in Singapore in terms of noodle texture and sauce flavour (thanks to the lard and sambal chili).
The soup and things in the bowl tasted pretty good too. But, the fishballs weren't as dense with fish meat as I like.
It was these fried fish cakes that got us all excited.
The tightly packed surimi fish cake felt springy to the bite with a slight crisp on the browned skin. The fish cake had a nice mild savoury flavour with underlying subtle fresh Ikan Parang (Wolf Herring) fish sweetness. The taste was quite addictive actually.
Suddenly, we found that we not only had reserve tummy space for another two fried fish cakes, but also a bowl of fried tofu skin in soup and even a fried ngoh hiang.
This was the best commercially sold ngoh hiang that I've had for a long time. The tender minced meat filling was moist, there were soft crunchy juicy diced water chestnut, bits of parsley etc. The ngoh hiang tasted well balanced savoury sweet punctuated with bits of aromatic greens.
👉 And so, from just intending to cool our heels in the air conditioned shop to discovering spare stomach space to tuck in a small mountain of food at the 8th food stop of the day - all the fault of Ah Koong's fried fish cakes, and not forgetting the mee pok. (Needless to say, the wacky company had a lot to do with it too.)
Restaurant name: Ah Koong Restaurant 亚坤纯正西刀鱼丸
Address: 266, Jalan Sutera,Taman Sentosa Johor Bahru
GPS: 1°29'39.1"N 103°47'00.0"E | 1.494190, 103.783337
Waze: Restoran Ah Koong
Tel: +60 7-331 3621
Hours: 6:30am - 11:00pm
Non Halal
Date visited: 13 Aug 2018
Follow me for more good JB food
Return to Johor Kaki homepage.
I was there last Friday. The fish balls and yong tau fu items were good and the fried fish cake and ngoh hiang with the chilli sauce were even better. But my dry mee pok was sadly over-cooked and tasted like the generic kind.
ReplyDelete