One of the definite Penang hawker dishes is Hokkien Char (福建炒), or Fried Hokkien Mee. However,this dish is quite different from what is served in Klang Valley even though they are identified as the same name.
I’ve been searching for this exact dish in KL/PJ area for a long time with no avail, so I just had to have it over this CNY season in Penang. This one is from Sin Yin Nam kopitiam at New Lane.
Penang Hokkien Char at New Lane
Hokkien Char usually consists of yellow noodle and mee hun in dark sauce, with slice pork, prawns, and vegetable, with sambal belacan on the side.
The main difference between this and the KL version is the lighter sauce base, the sambal belacan, and the usage of yellow noodle instead of those fat noodle in Hokkien Mee. As a consequence, the taste too is lighter and more subtle, but that being said, it is not at all a less superior version. In fact, I prefer this over the KL version anytime (most likely due to my upbringing laaa)
now where can I find something like this in KL?
I was utterly satisfied with this plate of Hokkien Char, one of the best RM 5 ever spent. The same place also offered one of the best pork intestine porridge (猪什粥), do not miss it if you are there. If I didn’t have the cravings for Hokkien Char, the pork intestine porridge would always be my favorite.
Penang style chee cheong fun: with three sauces
Of course, one does not simply only eat one dish in Penang for dinner. I had a plate of chee cheong fun (RM 2.40) to go with too. Two pieces, unopened, and with chili, just the way I like it.
Chee cheong fun Penang style is always bare, and served with shrimp paste, sweet sauce, chili paste, and sesame seeds, and sometimes with a bit of fried shallots. I like it quite a bit more than the HK version with prawns or char siu. If you need to find one of these in PJ, look no further than O&S in Paramount Garden.
Haze ordered the Asam Laksa at the corner of the road, it wasn’t any good and they over charged us to the tune of RM 4.50 (Chinese New Year price?). Never gonna buy from them ever.
Address:
Lorong Baru, Penang
GPS: 5.414726, 100.326312
After attending the Time Out Food Awards at KLPAC (a couple weeks ago), a few of us decided to have supper (or actually, dinner, since we didn’t really have a meal at the event). Boo of masak-masak suggested Sentul Ah Yap Hokkien mee, which was a great location since we were already at Sentul, and Hokkien mee for late night?
Awesome choice if you ask me, nothing beats some starch, pork, seafood, and lard near midnight.
restuarant Ah Yap Hokkien mee at Sentul, Jon & Isadora
While the premise of Sentul Ah Yap Hokkien mee is now a pretty nice corner shop lot with air conditioned as well as al fresco style dining areas, every plate of Hokkien mee is still prepared with good old charcoal fire, exactly the same as when it was just a stall in the nearby kopitiam. (there are even other branches now).
Many believes that Hokkien Mee is best fried using charcoal fire, and that there is a distinctive difference in taste when preapred with gas vs charcoal. For me though, I’m not quire sure, I like it when it tastes good, and frankly doesn’t care too much about the romantic idea of having it old school or modern. If it tastes good, it’s fine by me if it was gas, coal, charcoal, or wood fire.
the old school hokkien mee, made with charcoal fire
Our Hokkien mee (RM 12) was quite awesome, there were no surprises – big fat noodle, meehun (we asked for it), prawns, slices of fish cake, pork slices, vegetable, and of course, pork lard.
It really did taste as good as it looks, and made better when Isadora asked for extra lard for us. 
butter chicken, marmaid pork ribs, extra pork lard, and tapioka hokkien mee
Other than the Hokkien Mee, we also ordered marmite pork ribs, butter chicken, bitter gourd with salted egg yolk, and another plate of special Hokkien mee made with tapioka noodle.
The marmite ribs (RM 23) were frankly speaking, way too skinny. It would probably be a dream come true for those who loves lean meat, but we weren’t really impressed.
Butter chicken (RM 23) was a pretty decent dish though, flavorful with pretty nice texture to go with. The bitter gourd with salted egg yolk (RM 20) though, was my favorite for the night. The combination of the bitterness and the richness of salted egg yolk, in a weird sort of cosmic logic, worked well for our palates. This is a dish that needs to be tasted to be impressed.
As for the tapioka noodle Hokkien Mee (RM 16), well, imagine the texture of bubble tea pearls, except flattened and served in a plate of Hokkien mee ingredients. I wouldn’t say it was bad, bit it was a bit too chewy for my liking. A novelty perhaps, but not something I would order again.
The Hokkien mee at Ah Yap is certainly worth eating, the other dishes however, was a bit of a hit and miss, and does not really offer very good value for money either. I’d stick with having the original Hokkien mee and that sinful bitter gourd with salted egg yolk here.
Address:
Sentul Ah Yap Hokkien Mee
744, Jalan Sentul,
51000 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.178117, 101.692436
Tel : 012-3036800, 012-2816862
opening hours are from 5 p.m – 1 a.m
Restaurant O&S must be the most popular kopitiam at Taman Paramount/Seapark area (not to be confused with Taman Sea), and for one very simple reason – the place is filled with awesome hawker foods!
I’ve been here for so many occasions I mistakenly thought it was already covered on the blog, but it’s never too late I guess.
Restaurant O&S at Taman Paramount
The restaurant is opened for breakfast, lunch, and actually dinner too (with limited stalls operating, a siu chau for example). Breakfast/lunch on weekends is an affair not for the faint hearted, the place is absolutely packed, and you often have to share the same table with strangers ala HK style. It also goes without saying that securing a parking space isn’t a trivial matter around this area.
Then again, if there’s good food, that’s a small price to pay isn’t it?
Prawn Mee at restaurant O&S
The prawn mee at O&S is arguably the most famous dishes in this kopitiam. The stall here is operated by real Penangites (I always test their Hokkien) and offers both normal prawn mee soup, and loh mee (Penang style) soup. You can also opt for extra ingredients such as bigger prawns, pork ribs, and intestines.
A normal bowl goes for RM 4.50 and the soup really does pack a punch with that sweet prawn taste, on par with Yon Lee, TTDI, one of my favorite prawn mee places, with extra ingredients the price can go up to RM 7.50 or more but ohh soo tasty!
Penang Chee Cheong Fun & Laksa
Another thing that I always order at O&S is the Penang style chee cheong fun. The difference between this and HK chee cheong fun is that the Penang version comes with just the chee cheong fun, with har kou (prawn paste), dark sauce, chily, sesame seeds, and fried shallots. Less than RM 2 for a small plate, very addictive. There isn’t very many places you can find this.
Then there’s the asam laksa that is sworn by so many. Haze loved it and claimed that it tastes the same as her favorite Cheras pasar malam version. I tasted it a bit and it was actually quite good! Again, plenty of har kou too, and all the proper ingredients you’ll find in a bowl of Penang laksa like banana flower, cucumber, onion, and a big chunk of fish.
Haze and KY at restaurant O&S, Taman Paramount
There’re other good stuff at O&S that I shall be covering sometimes later, the Yeong Tau Foo, the steamed chicken rice, and more! Stay tuned
this is how you get to O & S restaurant
Address:
Restaurant O&S
Jalan 20/14, Seapark,
Petaling Jaya
GPS: 3.107713, 101.624919
I’ve spotted Hoo Yee Kee plenty of times while on the way to one of the better late night bak kut teh places at Kaka BKT in Kepong, what captured my attention was the big neon sign of a prawn over the roof of the hawker shag turned psychedelic dining area.
I told myself I’d give this place a try one of these days, and I did just that last week. *proud*
Hoo Yee Kee at Kepong, opens 24 hours
Don’t be fooled by the exterior of this place. From afar, it almost look like some air conditioned high class restaurant, but in actual fact it is just a highly renovated stall with a touch of quirkiness in design. This means that it is somewhat cute, but lacking in total environmental protection during thunderstorms, for example.
The menu is pretty extensive, lam mee, prawn mee, various sorts of drinks, chicken rice (if I remember), and a few other stuff. We ordered pretty “up market” noodle for both of us, while the “normal” meal starts from around RM 4.50, as you would expect from most hawker centres.
lam mee with crab
This plate of lam mee with crab (RM 18) was what Haze ordered.
This dish took a little while to serve, not entirely surprising since they had to cook the crab from scratch. The end result is a sweet tasting crab sitting on top of lam mee, with a half a hard boiled egg and all the other usual lam mee ingredients. The crab made the broth especially tasty too! It was very good.
prawn mee with pork, bubble tea
As for me, I went with their prawn mee with meat (RM12, normal RM 4.50). It came with a couple pork balls, pork slice, ribs, and a lot of intestine which I liked. The soup was a tad too sweet for me but otherwise a decent bowl of prawn mee. I still prefer the version at Yon Lee, TTDI to be honest. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t any impressive, not especially after I’ve seen the crab lam mee.
KY and Haze at Hoo Yee Kee
Both lam mee and prawn mee also do come in meat version, seafood version, and crab version. I haven’t tried the seafood version, but it does look to offer good value at RM 12. Will go there again, it’s especially convenient since the place’s open around the clock.
Address:
Hoo Yee Kee 好易记
Stall 7A, Jalan 29,
Kepong Baru,
52100 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.207726, 101.645079
Tel: 019-318 1533
Whenever a restaurant selling the same food with another more famous counterparts just a few doors a way and somehow still manage to survive all these years is always worth a visit.
Peng Yuan Hokkien Mee in Ah Fatt kopitiam is situated on the same row as the vastly more famous Ahwa Hokkien mee that I’ve blogged about, another example would be Satellite chicken rice located a few doors down from New Restaurant Ipoh Chicken Rice. If the two places can co-exist, one of them can’t be worse than the other.
Peng Yuan Hokkien Mee in Kedai Minuman dan Makanan Ah Fatt, off Jln 222
That said, we actually ended up at Peng Yuan because we had initially wanted to go to Ahwa, a place that is fast becoming one of our regulars. It was on a Tuesday, and Ahwa was closed. After a flurry of BBM messages, we decided to check out this joint to minimize logistic issues.
The place was packed, I suspect quite a lot of the extra customers ended up there due to the same reason. We made our orders, and waited, and waited, and waited….
wat tan hor (Cantonese flat noodle), hokkien mee, and fried chicken
Before our main dishes arrive (took some 20 minutes), we ordered some fried chicken wings and drumsticks as appetizer from the stall that claims to serve them “cheaper, bigger and better” (there’s a famous fried chicken wing stall at Ahwa to0).
Sure enough, the fried chicken turned out to be excellent. They were packed with flavor (asam?) and very succulent too, Jac ended up asking for an extra order, and that skinny bitch usually only eats as much as a small cat.
As far as Hokkien Mee (RM 15 for portion of 3) goes, I think Ahwa still has an edge, this dish at Peng Yuan was slightly too wet for my liking. The Cantonese flat noodle (wat tan hor, RM 15 for portion of 3) though, was fabulous. I especially like the very addictive sauce.
dessert soup, #porkgang, and nutmeg drinks
The kopitiam also serve “four fruits soup” (四果汤) that comes in a bowl with jelly and several types of nuts in a sweet soup. This is something that’s quite popular in Penang especially around those make shift theater that’s set up to worship the spirits/gods. The availability of nutmeg drinks, another Penang speciality, put me over the moon! If you haven’t tried it yet, you should.
Dinner turned out to cost less than RM 10 per person including the fried chicken and drinks. Though the hokkien mee was a bit of a let down, I’d come back here for the chicken wings and cantonese noodle, and oh, the drinks too!
Address:
Ah Fatt Kopitiam
42, Jalan 14/48,
Petaling Jaya, Selangor
GPS: 3.097563, 101.629334
