Today's lunch at 980 Teochew Restaurant 980潮州小食 in a quiet corner of Masai, Johor Bahru. We enjoyed the comforting, traditional fare here and will be back for more.
Tucked away in quiet Taman Cahaya Kota Putri in Masai, 980 Teochew restaurant is well known to locals and has a loyal following.
The menu is handwritten in Chinese on a white board. Don't worry as the friendly owner will come around to recommend dishes and take orders.
980 Teochew Restaurant was founded some 50 years ago. After three generations, the founding family retired and handed the recipes and operations to their extended family around 3 years ago. The menu has changed a bit to include some non Teochew dishes. Some dishes like Teochew cold crab, I don't see on the menu now.
Not enough eating troops today (just 2 of us), so we just had 3 dishes and flavoured rice.
芋头扣肉 Stewed pork belly with yam, a quintessential Hakka dish.
We actually wanted to order pig trotter cooked in vinegar but Alex, the owner advised us that the trotters today don't have much fat. I don't know how Alex knew that I like my pork dishes to have more fat - maybe it's my grey hair and rotund figure 😂 So, we ordered this stewed pork belly with yam instead.
The yam (taro) and stewed pork belly were well infused with savoury and slightly sweet flavours. Delicious, and the only thing I can nitpick on was the tender stewed pork belly can be slightly softer.
Leatherjacket fish (teck kia herr 竹仔鱼) cooked in fermented black bean paste 鸡肉鱼煮豆酱. It looked like a tangled heap of bones and flesh, which of course it was.
At first, we ordered shovel nose shark. Then, Alex came to tell us that the smallest piece weighed 1 kilo (price about RM100) and asked for our confirmation of the order. It was really too much food for us, so we changed the order to leatherjacket fish. I appreciate Alex's honestly (he could easily just serve us the more expensive dish) and would definitely be back for the shovel nose shark once I gather enough eating troops.
The leatherjacket fish were small, their white flesh tenderly soft and sweet, with gooey sauce made with fermented black bean paste providing robust savoury balance. There were lots of julienned ginger and some spring onion in the dish.
We enjoyed the fish but do be careful that there are lots of small bones in this dish.
Every table had this sayur manis fried with eggs. Nicely savoury sweet with the characteristic green taste and fibrous texture of mani cai 马尼菜.
"Cai fun" 菜飯 or "vegetable rice" - rice cooked with soy sauce, carrot, long beans and a bit of pork fat. A bit wet, soft and clumpy but tasted good on its own and with the dishes. We also ordered plain white rice to moderate the savoury tasting dishes.
Our total bill including drinks came to RM71.
Another customer's shovel nose shark. I got no chance to eat this today, but at least I fed the camera 😂
Information for you 👌 We enjoyed our simple lunch today. Traditional, homely dishes prepared with fresh ingredients which were well executed. The flavours are on the robust side but are well balanced. Prices are competitive. We will be back and will update this post with any new dishes we tried.
Restaurant name: Restoran 980 潮州小食
Address: Blk D G02, Jalan Jelatang 2, Taman Cahaya Kota Putri, Masai, Johor
GPS: 1°29'27.6"N 103°50'43.3"E 🌐 1.491003, 103.845358
WAZE: Restaurant 980 (Non Halal)
Tel: 013 783 3793
Hours: 8:00am - 3:00pm (Sunday off)
Non Halal
Date visited: 21 Feb 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment
All comments submitted with genuine identities are published