I first came across this new-to-me Penang Hokkien Prawn Mee stall from Lionel’s instagram feed. By the look of the picture as well as the trust I have Lionel as someone who knows his food as well as the link he provides (article on The Malay Mail written by Khang Yi of masak-masak), I knew then I had to visit this place the very next day, which I did.
Penang prawn mee Red Leaf restaurant, Jalan Loke Yew
Restaurant Red Leaf is located at Restoran Red Leaf (also known as Restoran Shoong City?) at the intersection of Jalan Loke Yew and Lorong Loke Yew. While being by the main road, it also manage to stay somewhat hidden from view, so do not miss your turning.
The Hokkien Prawn mee stall is manned by the owner who’s been operating at the same spot for some 30 years and originally hailed from Penang. An easy test is to order a bowl in Penang Hokkien, which I almost always do when ordering Penang hawker food in Klang Valley.
prawn mee with extra prawns
The usual small bowl goes for RM 6, but you can also have it with extra prawns for RM 9 each. Naturally that was what I went for.
The prawn mee came with the usual ingredients of sea-caught prawns, kangkung, bean sprouts, pork slices, fried shallots, and your choice of yellow noodle, meehun, or both.
The broth carries a strong prawn note with a sweet seafood taste to it, with every ingredient jelled quite nicely to make a bowl of proper prawn mee that is my current favorite among the hawker offerings in Klang Valley.
I was certainly a happy customer
Will certainly make this one of my regular pre-work breakfast stops.
Addresss: Restoran Red Leaf No 61 & 63, Ground Floor Jalan Loke Yew, 55200 KL GPS: 3.129614, 101.711412 Hours: 7am – 12pm
My brother works at Sungai Petani, and the passion towards food runs in the family, so whenever I’m up north at his place, he always make sure there’s something interesting to try.
On my last visit it, it was something I’ve never had before – Prawn mee with salted pork.
May Lin kopitiam’s hokkien mee stall
Salted pork is one ingredient that I’ve never really seen anywhere else. It is a delicacy among locals here that’s made from fatty bits of pork with some chunks of meat not entirely unlike pork cracklings – crunchy, full of flavor, and in this case,a bit salty too.
One place to have this is at May Lin kopitiam, one of the popular spots for late dinner and supper among the locals.
prawn mee with salt pork, the Sg. Petani way
The prawn mee stall offers both hokkien mee and loh mee, with a number of “extras” – including prawns, intestine, pork ribs, and of course – salt pork.
For anyone who loves pork crackles or lard, the salt pork is definitely the way to go. It really adds a great dimension to the entire dish, especially after the good bits soaks up some prawn mee soup, heaven!
grilled chicken wings as centreplate
May Lin also have stalls offering BBQ chicken wings, satey, loh bak, and so forth. We’ve tried wings & satey and these definitely make for good side dishes.
Address: May Lin Kopitiam 552, Jalan Kuala Ketil, Kampung Sungai Tongka, 08000 Sungai Petani, Kedah GPS: 5.638794, 100.493260 Hours: 7pm to midnight
Prawn mee is only called prawn mee if you’re in Klang Valley, which is a bit funny since it is a dish that is originated from Penang, and up North we always called it Hokkien mee. It is unfortunate that Hokkien Mee is referred to something that looks like a plate of greased up worm instead of this glorious bowl of some of the finest creations from the Hokkien clan.
Anyway, today I want to introduce to you one of my latest hawker find, the prawn mee stall at Sungai Way, first made aware to me by one of my instagram followers. A hawker stall at Heng Lee kopitiam located right opposite Sungai Way morning market on the main road with the entrance from Federal Highway.
glorious bowl of Penang style prawn mee
For RM 6, you get a bowl of prawn mee with all the proper ingredients such as prawn, boiled egg (a whole egg in this case), pork slices, kangkung, bean sprout, your favorite noodle/meehun, and even a few slices of fish paste which I don’t really care much about. The chili paste here is pretty decent, but the stand out part of this dish would be the broth, which I thought was really on point.
One thing to note, this stall serves Penang Laksa instead of prawn mee on Wednesday, something which I thought is a bit of a funny dish for breakfast, but whatever rock your socks. Give it a try if you’re a fan of these dishes.
Address: Heng Lee Kopitiam (opposite wet market) 611 Jalan SS 9a/1, Sungai Way, Petaling Jaya Selangor GPS:3.086479, 101.620678 Hours: breakfast
New Boston is arguably the most popular “tai chao” restaurants in Klang, and one with a reputation to boot. It is this reputation that took me more than a year after moving to Shah Alam to finally give it a try.
What’s the reputation you may ask? They are two, first – the lala is awesome, and second, the queue is super long. As we found out, both of these claims are true.
New Boston Restaurant at Klang, wait and you shall be rewarded
It was a planned dinner with a bunch of relatives, so to avoid disappointment Haze went there just before 6pm (opening hours at 7pm) to start queuing, and within minutes there were already a couple other people joining the line.
We got our seats by 6:55 pm and made our orders about 5 minutes past 7 pm. To be fair, it took less than 20 minutes for our first dish to be served, which wasn’t too bad considering it was already fully packed by then.
If you arrived after 7 pm, chances are you may have to wait quite a bit before getting a table, and it’ll certainly be an exercise of patience to get your food. However, New Boston operates till about 2 am so if you come here for supper, it’ll probably be a more pleasant experience.
order your lala in abundance
The claim of fame for this place is the lala in superior soup (RM 24), and if you’ve already invested all those time in waiting, I’d definitely recommend ordering enough to go around. For the 10 of us, we asked for 6 plates, and that turned out to be just right. Some even suggest to order one big portion per person.
The lala did meet the almost impossible expectations, it was really fresh, juicy, and had just the right kick & slight spiciness from ginger, garlic, and chili padi to make any lala fan yearn for more.
The lala used here is what Hokkien refered to as “kap par”, which has a thicker shell but also more substantial & juicer meat, which I really enjoyed. For the “normal” lala in prepared in kam heong method, I recommend the version at Alisan street hawker at PJ SS4, available at night..
lala, claypot seafood tofu & vegetable dishes
We had a full dinner with rice at New Boston, and thankfully most of the dishes here were also right up there in terms of quality.
Claypot seafood tofu came packed with a generous portion of goodness, while the greens had good wok hei and generous amount of garlic, which I really liked.
Fried Hokkien mee is another one of the more popular dishes here. It is very rich, dark, and came with enough lard to satisfy any Hokkien mee fans. One word of caution though, this should be consumed piping hot, a cold version of super rich Hokkien mee is usually not entirely too appetizing.
hokkien mee, steamed red snapper, ginger chicken, mantis prawn with oat
Another stand-out dish we really enjoyed from New Boston was their soya fried ginger chicken, it was absolutely spot on and went really well with steamed rice. I think perhaps their secret is the ginger, both lala & chicken utilizes a lot of ginger, and they were some of the best redetions of these dishes I’ve tried.
Mantis prawn with oats & steamed fish were decent dishes as well, but not up to the expectations set up by the wait time at this place.
Anyway, if you’re a lala lover, you owe yourself to try this place at least once. I will probably head back to this place again one of these day,s but most likely not for the busy dinner session.
Address: New Boston Restaurant 1E, Jalan Kapar,
Kawasan 18, 41000 Klang GPS: 3.050331, 101.448086 Tel: 012-905 3523 Hours: 7pm to 2pm, closed on Wednesdays
Sometimes the best eateries are the one you stumbled upon when the original place you want to go isn’t opened for business, and this was precisely how we ended up at Hong Lai at Setapak after a failed attempt to get go Restoran Sup & Popiah Zaiton Hussinfor some good old fashion sup lidah (ox tongue soup).
Hong Lai hokkien mee at Setapak
To be honest, when we were at Hong Lai, we had no idea what to order and basically just glanced at the other tables. We ended up with hokkien mee (福建面) and yin yeong (鸳鸯), which turned out to be a decent choice, but missed out their speciality (which I read at a later time) – moonlight noodle (月光河)
yin yeong and fried hokkien mee
Over here good old fashioned charcoal fire is used, which some swore produced the best “wok hei”. I guess there’s some sense of truth to it as charcoal often manage to heat up the wok to much higher temperature.
The hokkien mee tasted decent if not a little less elastic than I’m used to, you can see that they get chopped up to smaller strands in the (rather poor quality) picture above. The yin yeong though, was excellent! The crispy fried portion with those flavorful brothy wet portion mixed well to give an explosion of texture and flavor that can only be described as a perfect match, we were surprised in a good way.
Haze & KY for some supper goodness
Now we just need an excuse to be there for their moonlight noodle.
Hong Lai opens for dinner and supper, and you’ll be able to dine here until a couple hours past midnight, which is convenient for those after-clubbing hunger pangs.
Address: Kedai Kopi Dan Makanan Hong Lai 83, Jalan Genting Klang Setapak, Kuala Lumpur GPS: 3.192163, 101.709022 Hours: 6:30pm-2:30am
