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It is very common for a dish famous in one area to be offered in another part of the country with slightly altered ingredients. This is usually done due to availability, or sometimes just to better suit the local taste.

For Penang hawker dishes in Klang Valley, curry mee is perhaps the one dish that is affected the most. The ingredients used is sometimes so different from the version up North you wonder why they still share the same name.

Anyway, for the true Penang curry mee lovers, here are four places where Penang curry mee is offered with one crucial ingredient (to me, the most important ingredient) to unite them all – coagulated pork blood.

Penang curry mee at Restaurant Okay, PJ SS2

The father and son stall at Restaurant Okay, SS2 operates from about 7:30am and usually sells out in a little over two hours. There’s prawn, blood, cockles, cuttle fish, and very fragrant sambal paste. There’s always a couple tables filled with Penangites seated right next to the stall on weekday mornings, I join them from time to time.

Address:
Restaurant Okay
2, Jalan SS2/10,
Petaling Jaya, Selangor
(at the other end of the same row of shop houses comprising KAYU)
GPS: 3.115084, 101.616390
Hours: 7:30 am to 9:30 am, off Mondays

Curry mee at Sun Sea kopitiam, OUG

Closer to KL, the version of Penang curry mee at Sun Sea kopitiam in OUG is also legit. It comes with all the essential ingredients with those slightly charred chilli paste. I also love the way they leave the cockles just ever slightly cooked.

Address:
Restaurant Sun Sea
Jalan Hujan Rahmat,
Overseas Union Garden,
58200 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.073945, 101.673234
Hours: daily till around noon+

curry mee from Penang One, Puchong

For those who are willing to pay a bit more for air conditioned dining environment, Penang One offers curry mee all the way from Pulau Tikus Keong’s curry mee stall in Penang. The cuttle fish used here is the darker version closer to one you find in mee goreng mamak, and there’s long bean, mint leaves, and even bunga kantan thrown in. Definitely worth the extra RM 2-3 they charge over kopitiam versions.

Address:
Penang One at Puchong
G2, Jalan Puteri 2/6,
Bandar Puteri,
47100 Puchong, Selangor
GPS: 3.023883, 101.617950
Tel: 03-8052 0181
Hours: 9.30am – 9.30pm daily

Address:
Penang One at Kota Damansara
16-1, Jalan PJU5/7,
Dataran Sunway,
47810 Kota Damansara, PJ
GPS: 3.152335, 101.594404
Tel: 03-6151 1083
Hours: 10.30am – 10.30pm daily

Penang white curry mee at Mayiang Jaya cafe, PJ

The Penang white curry mee stall at Mayiang Jaya Cafe is one of my latest discovery in this category. All the essential ingredients is presence except prawns. Mint leaves and long beans sort of make up for it I guess, I always ask for more pork blood here. It is perhaps the weaker version among the four, but still one that manage to satisfy my cravings.

Address:
Mayiang Jaya cafe
28, Jalan SS26/4,
Taman Mayang Jaya,
Petaling Jaya 47301 Selangor
GPS: 3.116374, 101.604224
Hours: breakfast and lunch

As someone from Penang staying in Klang Valley, we always look out for a good bowl of curry mee. Unlike char kuih teow which is now pretty popular pretty much everywhere, curry mee is a bit of a different case.

See, the problem is, there’s already a version of curry mee (often called curry laksa) in KL that are quite similar yet different from the Penang version in terms of ingredients and sometimes, the soup base itself.

Mayiang Jaya cafe at Taman Mayang, behind Lincoln College (old Lim KoK Wing)

While both versions usually have santan (coconut milk) as the base of the curry mee soup, the Klang Valley version is usually closer to curry chicken in taste, while the Penang version is more bare, relying only on santan and the usually more superior and fragrant chilly paste. As for ingredients, KL version usually has curry chicken, while the Northern counterpart completes the bowl with seafood.

this bowl of Penang white Curry Mee is legit

So far I’ve only had less than a handful of good Penang curry mee in KL, so I was more than happy to discover a relatively new stall at Mayiang Jaya cafe here at Taman Mayang in PJ claiming to offer Penang “White” curry mee.

The curry mee turned out to be legit. It came with coagulated pork blood (my favorite!), cuttle fish, cockles, long bean, tofupok, mint leaves, bean sprout, and pretty decent fragrant chilli paste as well. You can choose between mee hun, mee, or a mixture of both as your choice of carbo.

yeap, there’s cuttle fish, and even coagulated pork blood

For RM 5.50, this was a pretty decent bowl of Penang curry mee, even though one crucial ingredient, prawns, is lacking. I would not hesitate to have this curry mee again.

Hours are from breakfast to lunch, so this is definitely the place to go if you can’t wake up early enough for the SS2 Restaurant Okay’s version (which is slightly superior). If you’re a fan of Penang curry mee, this version at PJ is definitely worth checking out.

Address:
28, Jalan SS26/4,
Taman Mayang Jaya,
Petaling Jaya 47301 Selangor
GPS: 3.116374, 101.604224
Hours: breakfast and lunch

If you’re a fan of Penang curry mee, pay attention.

Remember this brand – MyKuali, with the product name Penang WHITE Curry Noodle. If you happen to see anywhere stocking it, buy as many as you can carry. Give it to any Penang curry mee fans and they’ll forever be indebted to you.

MyKuali instant Penang curry mee

Well, MyKuali instant Penang white curry mee is exactly what the title suggests. A ready-in-3-minute instant noodle that comes in an unsuspecting plastic packet much like most other instant noodle. While typical instant noodle weigh about 70 gram (Indomie), MyKuali’s version is a whopping 110 gram, so it comes in a pack of 4 instead of the usual 5.

The extra net weight does not come only from the noodle, which is slightly thicker, but also the 3 different condiment packets. Two to make up for the white soup, and one chili paste that completes the dish to be almost exactly what you get from the hawker stalls.

the sambal is absolutely terrifying, I love it.

While the noodle in itself isn’t particularly special (they are springy and generally nice), the soup is superb! It is very spicy with the aroma that can easily fool any curry mee fan from a fresh hawker version, even though non-dairy creamer is used in substitute of santan for the white soup here. It is simply superb.

MyKuali originally created this for Malaysian overseas who misses local delights, but it is now making a huge wave of demand within Penang and many parts in Malaysia as well. Easy to see why after I tasted it.

A single serving packs about 554 kcal’s worth of energy, eat responsibly.

p/s: I believe you can get them at SOGO everywhere, and Sunshine Wholesale in Penang

Hunting for food is one of the things I do very often, be it breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper. And if you haven’t notice already, I tend to share them across various platforms whenever I find a dish worthy of your taste buds.

Armed with a Samsung GALAXY Camera as my weapon of choice these days, I want to show you aspect of food photography which coincide with my favorite category in Samsung’s This is My Moment, Live campaign – the top down view of some of Malaysia’s Best foods.

I always love this angle of view when it comes to food photography, it represents the diner’s point of view when food is presented on the table. You get to see everything, the glistering fats, the contrasting colors, and sometimes even a hint of steam rising from the hot dish.

Here are five food photography tips using photos taken with Samsung GALAXY Camera, resized for this space.

1. Go Close

Sometimes you want to get close while still incorporating everything. The sambal, cockles, cuttle fish, prawns, tofu, noodle, and those coagulated pork blood all within the frame. It spells a delicious bowl of Penang curry mee (SS2 Restauran Okay)

2. Divide and Conquer

It’s often effective to snap photos of the dish after it’s separated to serving size. This makes the photo less busy and further enhances the main ingredient(s), in this example, the massive river prawns. (Pan Heong, Batu Caves)

3. The Little Things

Don’t forget the little things in your photo. The example above includes the chop sticks and sambal condiment, and sometimes you can crop away the dishes a little bit to avoid the photo looking dull. However, you should also try not to have anything irrelevant creeping into the photos, such as the glove at the top left corner of this photo.

4. Contrast

Contrasting colors make for visually striking photos. Red bowl, black table top, yellow noodle, and green chili featured in this wantan mee dish. (Jalan Brunei off Jalan Pudu, next to Caltex) The only missing major color is blue, which isn’t a color associated with food anyway.

5. Everything In It!

Lastly, the simplest way is to include everything on the table in one shot. This is especially useful when you want to convey the size of the dish, like this big breakfast set with two extra side dishes and a piece of pie at Antipodean (Bangsar). Try to arrange your dishes so it fits into the frame properly, and do make sure that there aren’t too many distractions (tip #3).

So if you’re like me who takes a lot of food photos to share, consider submitting them to This is My Moment, Live. Two person who’s 5 pictures submissions have been selected by Samsung will get a RM 100 cash prize!

Good luck and happy clicking!

Last week we found ourselves at Cheras looking for a place to fill the stomach in the morning. Searched the web a bit and decided to head to Taman Midah for something which I can’t even remember. Didn’t manage to find the place, and ended up at this road side shack by the name of 陈记缅档 (Chan Kei Noodle Stall).

Chan Kei noodle stall at Taman Midah

I basically followed the conventional wisdom that if a place is packed, it can’t be bad. So we parked the bike and waited for a minute to get a vacant table.

Business at this noodle stall was brisk, and they seemed to offer quite a variety of noodle dishes. Haze ordered asam laksa (only available on Sundays), and I asked for a bowl of curry mee.

asam laksa and KL style curry mee

The KL style curry mee came with plenty of fat, juicy cockles, slabs of fried pork skin, tofu, bean sprouts, and rather fragrant sambal. While I still prefer Penang style curry mee, this one did not disappoint. It was as good as any central style curry mee I tried.

Asam laksa from here got the seal of approval from Haze as well, having all the necessary ingredients working well together.

This place is another old school stalls that kept dishing out good food over the years, I think we gotta go back there to try other dishes next time.

Address:
陈记缅档
Jalan Midah Besar,
Taman Midah, Cheras,
Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.10188, 101.732857