Tony Johor Kaki Travels for Food · Heritage · Culture

Stalking Johor Jaya for food, I stumbled upon the newly opened Emperor Wan Tan Mee shop.

I don't know man, Johor Jaya need another wanton mee shop meh? 🤔

Johor Jaya, the JB makan hotspot is already well past saturation point for wanton noodles. There must be more than 10 wanton mee shops and stalls within 2km of this shop. There are 桃园面家, Tampoi Ah B (Johor Jaya), Grandpapatee (Johor Jaya), KP Noodle Kong Kee, just to mention a few.

I am a wanton mee ~~fanatic~~ lover, and I am curious, so I couldn't help stepping in for a try.

Emperor is a simply decorated, basically furnished, air conditioned, clean and bright eating space typical in Malaysia today. Nice ambiance and welcoming staff. Clean washroom and paper provided (well appreciated and not to be taken for granted).

The menu has many options - besides the traditional white, red and black, there's crystal char siew, even soft boiled egg, etc.

So many side dishes, I noted that they have hand made fish balls too. Johor is a fish ball paradise.

First time here, I had my usual traditional "white" with chili. It's pork lard with aromatic oil and a bit of chili sauce (at my request).

I could tell right away that the duck egg noodles were from Tampoi Ah B. Tender yet crunchy.

The familiar sauce was generous, so every strand was amply enveloped with savoury lardy mildly spicy goodness.

I love it.

The char siew was the typical Johor type which was lean, tender, a little fibrous and gently savoury sweet. Pleasant though unremarkable.

So, it's all about the nice noodle texture and simple traditional sauce.

The wantons were old school, smooth, fresh soft tender ground pork filling, simple seasoning, sweet savoury flavours, nice!

Good first impression, I earmarked Emperor for a second visit.

The second time, I chose the same white sauce with chili and topped with crystal char siew.

I asked for lard croutons and look at how much they gave me 😲

Emperor is really customer oriented. Two separate staff came over to me and asked for my feedback. The lady who took my order came to check, to make sure that I was given the pork lard croutons that I requested.

I sometimes wished for KL style crystal char siew with my Johor wanton mee which normally comes with anaemic lean and thin sliced char siew.

So at Emperor Wan Tan Mee, my wish came true. The charcoal roasted fatty char siew came slathered with dark char siew sauce.

The char siew slices were soft tender, sweet savoury. A bit too sweet for my taste and the char flavour was a bit too shy.

The same Ah B duck egg noodles which I like, soft crunchy. I tossed the lard and aromatic oil together with the char siew sauce - everything ended up leaning on the sweeter side due to the char siew sauce.

It's great if you like sweeter sauce but for me, next time I will ask them not to slather the sweet char siew sauce on my roast pork.