History & Origin of San Lou Mi Fen 🥢 Johor Bahru Chao Tah Bee Hoon 三楼炒米粉

✍ 28 Mar 2026. When we eat at restaurants in Johor Bahru and also in Singapore, we sometimes find a dish known as San Lou Mifen or Bee Hoon 三楼干米粉. It literally means "three storey dry rice vermicelli".

It's called "three storey dry rice vermicelli" because it was created in 1979, in a zhi char 煮炒 (cook and fry) restaurant located at the ground level of this three storey public housing flat in Stulang Laut in Johor Bahru.

The restaurant known as San Low Seafood 三楼海鲜园 has moved across the road (Eastern Dispersal Link) to Taman Pelangi at Jalan Merah 1 (since the 1990s).

The dish's creator Yeo Lai Kee 杨涞智 opened his own restaurant known as Restoran Ah Kaw 亚九咖喱鱼头店 at #33, Jalan Perang.

We can get San Lou mi fen at San Low Seafood and Restoran Ah Kaw, as well as other restaurants in Johor and Singapore now.

There's an urban legend that San Lou bee hoon was a lucky mistake. A cooking apprentice over fried the rice vermicelli, burnt it, and voila! San Lou mifen was born!

But, in real life, creation of San Lou mi fen was anything but a lucky fluke.

It was the hard work of its creator Yeo Lai Kee 杨涞智 back in 1979.

Yeo was a cook at San Low Seafood when it was still at the Stulang Laut flats. The zhi char (cook and fry) industry in Johor Bahru was getting very competitive (and still is). In order to survive in this tough market, Yeo's boss tasked him to create a fried noodle dish to attract customers to San Low Seafood.

After a whole month and 80 kilos of bee hoon, Yeo finally created San Lou mi fen. You can imagine the frenzied pace and intense research and development that went into creating San Lou mi fen.

It's rice vermicelli, blanched and air dried. The rice noodles are stir fried in a hot wok with sesame oil, soy sauce and oyster sauce together with bean sprouts, shelled prawns, lean pork slices, fish cake slices, eggs and green vegetables (菜心 chai sim). Ingredients-wise it's a very austere dish.

The dish is all in the execution. Besides vigorously stir frying and tossing the wok's contents over lashing flames, the chef presses the noodles firmly with the iron spatula on the searing wok surface to scorch the noodles outside.

The result is a flattened mound of bee hoon that is brown outside with darker shades of caramelisation. The seared outside is slightly wiry with spots of crispness. We can smell the toasty aroma from the caramelised sauces when the steamy dish is delivered to our table.

Inside, the rice noodles are tender and moist, with strands well infused with umami savoury flavours from soy sauce and oyster sauce. Subtle natural sweetness imparted by fresh pork and prawns added layers of flavours to the dish. The leaves and stalks of chye sim greens 菜心 add colour, crunch, juiciness and flavours to the noodles.

San Lou mi fen was a success, a hit among customers, quickly becoming San Low Seafood's signature draw. The humble dish has since became a JB food icon which is widely emulated even across the Causeway in Singapore.

San Lou mi fen is served with a sambal belacan specially created for the dish. The umami savoury flavours with spicy heat elevate the taste of the humble bee hoon. The zesty fresh calamansi juice cut through the grease used to stir fry the bee hoon.

Ironically, San Lou mi fen by itself is not a lucrative dish - as much as it is popular, it is very hard to make big money with this dish as the ingredients are inexpensive, so restaurants couldn't charge a premium for it. Yet, it is very time consuming and skill intensive to execute well - ties up wok time and skilled manpower, especially during peak hours.

The dish survives as a storied icon to attract customers and hopefully the restaurant could make money selling higher margin dishes on the menu.

Today, Restoran Ah Kaw 亚九咖喱鱼头店 still serves San Lou mi fen, though its creator Yeo Lai Kee (born 1958) has retired and the restaurant is now run by his son Isaac Yeo.

San Lou mi fen is also served at Yeo's elder son-in-law 张志明 and daughter 杨文姗's Restoran Ah Meng 阿明家乡小炒 at Taman Iskandar.

Yeo's younger son-in-law 陈俊鸣 and daughter 杨文慧 run Restoran Ming Ji 铭记家乡小炒 in Taman Johor Jaya at Jalan Ros Merah.

San Low Seafood 三楼海鲜 is still at Jalan Merah 1 and still have San Lou mi fen on their menu.

San Lou mi fen is widely emulated. When you are eating in a Johor Chinese restaurant, just ask the wait staff if they have it. There is a more than even chance that they do.

Who is Tony Johor Kaki?

San Lou Bee Hoon or Mifen (三楼米粉 in Mandarin) is an iconic dish from Johor Bahru which is also served in a handful Singapore zi char restaurants. Why is this popular fried rice vermicelli dish known as San Lou bee hoon? What is San Lou?

San Lou 三楼 refer to this old three storey public housing flat along Jalan Stulang Darat in Johor Bahru (5 minutes drive from the Causeway). This flat is still there today (2021), part of a small precinct of three such blocks.

There were three restaurants side by side at this block of three storey flats - from right to left, Kedai Makanan Spring Garden (zi char), Restoran Come & Eat (Teochew porridge), and Makanan Laut San Low Seafood.

(In this picture taken in 2018, San Low Seafood had left and its shop unit occupied by THC Motor Enterprise, a motorcycle repair shop.)

In a second three storey block in the same precinct, there is a San Lou Cafe (Seafood) which is a different restaurant. It is also one of my favourites but it does not serve San Lou bee hoon. More about San Lou Cafe (Seafood) 👈 click

San Low Seafood was the most successful and moved to larger premises at Jalan Biru in the 1990s. The restaurant is now in a residential area in Taman Pelangi but retained the name San Low Seafood 三楼海鲜 which literally means Three Storey Seafood.

Most Singaporeans came to know about San Lou bee hoon when San Low Seafood is in this location (5 minutes drive from the Causeway) and sometimes wondered how the name San Lou or Three Storey came about.

Now we know where the name Three Storey came from, but what is so special about this fried bee hoon?

The dish is made with simple, humble ingredients. It is bee hoon (rice vermicelli), egg, fish cake slices, lean pork slices, small prawn, squid, chye sim greens, chopped garlic and a blended sauce which contains oyster sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce, chili sauce, etc.

A single person serving is sold at RM6 today (2021).

The secret of this dish is in the frying technique. It is all about mastery of wok fire 火喉 and wok hei 锅气. The result is a mound of bee hoon which is dry, browned and caramelised outside. Under the dry, slightly crisp layer, the bee hoon below is moist and well infused with the sauce's savoury flavours.

The infused flavours burst in the mouth when we chew the mouthful of fried bee hoon. The toasty aroma as well as mix of tender-soft and crisp textures add to our pleasure.

The crisp outside, moist inside bee hoon is hard to achieve. We often get San Lou bee hoon which has little wok hei, too dry and wiry inside with little infusion of flavours in the bee hoon. No distinct crisp and tender-soft layers. It is also sometimes too greasy.

San Lou bee hoon is sometimes referred to as chow tah bee hoon or burnt rice vermicelli. That would actually be a poor rendition of the dish as the outside should only be crisped and browned with pleasant wok hei, not charred.

Truth be told, the most memorable San Lou bee hoon for me was at San Low Seafood in Taman Pelangi in Dec 2011. A good San Lou bee hoon is hard to get today, even in JB.

So San Lou bee hoon came from San Low Seafood when it was located at the Stulang Darat three storey flats. How did it come about?

In 1979, as competition among zi char and seafood restaurants in JB was burning red hot, the boss of San Low Seafood tasked one of his cooks Yeo Lai Kee 杨涞智 whom everyone knows as Ah Kaw 亚九 to come up with a winning dish.

Ah Kaw said it took him one month and 80 kilos of bee hoon before he came up with the prototype San Lou bee hoon. It was hard R & D (research & development) work and not some fluke as urban legend have it. No, it wasn't an unknown cook who over fried and burnt his bee hoon by mistake and hey presto, San Lou bee hoon!

Anyway, Ah Kaw's creation was a big hit and the dish remains an icon of JB food to this day. Even now, fifty years on, San Low Seafood remains a leading zi char restaurant in Johor Bahru thanks to their signature San Lou bee hoon.

Today, we can get San Lou bee hoon at Ah Kaw's own restaurant in Taman Pelangi, Johor Bahru 👈 click

Ah Kaw's elder son-in-law's Ah Meng restaurant in Taman Iskandar, Johor Bahru 👈 click

Ah Kaw's younger son-in-law's Ming Ji restaurant in Taman Johor Jaya Rosmerah 👈 click

We can still get San Lou bee hoon at San Low Seafood restaurant in Taman Pelangi 👈 click

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Written by Tony Boey on 1 Mar 2021

Who is Tony Johor Kaki?