Lo Han Kuo

This is the best "Lo Han Kuo" dessert in Malacca. The stall has been there since I was young. Easily, I can say it has been around for more than 30 years. The stall is located at Bunga Raya. You can easily spot them, because they are the only "Lo Han Kuo" seller in this area.

The dessert is home-cooked! REAL ingredients was use, unlike those in big cities, where everything is instant or "powder-bancuh". It is nice to drink it cold in a hot afternoon!

This is the uncle...

Peanut Dessert @ "Hwa Shen Tang"

This is one of our 'childhood dessert'. We use to have this quite often during our younger days, however, now it is not that easily found. I was happy to find it (accidentally) after so many years! I remembered there was an old uncle at Bunga Raya who use to sell it during the night. I guess he must have passed away, cause there was one night sis and i went to his place but it was not open, and whenever we passed by his little corner he was not there still.

The one that i found recently is at the Newton Hawker Center (Next to Mahkota Parade). You can find it at the dessert bar and they are selling it at RM1.00 per bowl. This is also nice (but still can't beat the old uncle lah...). The peanut was soft but it is not as thick.

The best way to enjoy it is to eat it together with "yao char kuai". Make sure that the dessert is (really) hot and then deep the "yao char kuai" into it! Yummy!!!

Healthy food

Aaah...after the porky and fatty noodle soup, let's take a break from the "not so healthy" food. The one who is the most health conscious in our family is Mum, so it is not a surprise that she is the one who introduces me to this vegetarian restaurant.

This place started off as a shop that sell all kind of organic stuff. They have all the organic vegetables and fruits. They also sell brown rice, flour, noodles (dried) and crackers. Health drinks like 5-grains milk powder, spirulina, wheatgrass powder etc. They also have organic chili sauce, tomato sauce, light soya sauce, thick soya sauce , tom yam paste and many (1000x) more. (see the pics below).

After about 10 years, they started to cooked meal for people who wants to eat healtily. At first it was on request basis, later on people seems to like it and started coming on walk-in basis. Sometimes they have to turn the customers down, because they didn't pre-order the meal. Since it is a good business, the owner decided to start the restaurant. So now, anyone who walk in can have a healthy meal! :)

Their menu is simple, basically it have 4 categories - the rice, noodle, drinks and dessert. Since this is my first time there, i will only introduce what i've tasted and is nice.

"Set lunch"

Their set lunch is simple. A bowl of seaweed soup, salad as appetizer and two different kind of vegetables and taufu as the main dish. The one we happen to try was asam lady's finger with egg plant, Curry potato and black sauce taufu with dried bean curd. The set lunch also comes with a bowl of brown rice sprinkled with some white sesame (YikeS!!! :P brown rice is still not my favourate...haha...)

Salad

Rice

"Herbal soup noodle"

Their herbal soup is NICE! Nice! NICE! You can have it with (organic) bee-hoon, kuey-teow, mee or "mee-hun-kuey". Here, i decided to have it with "mee-hun-kuey". I was told that the flour was organic as well, it does taste like one :) The herbs is just nice, not too overly strong. They have many types of different ingredients in ther soup like seaweed, mini corns, green leafty veggie, mushroom, "kei chee", some sweet corns and tau fu. The soup is REALLY tasty! This is one soup that you can finish it to the last drop without having to worry about ajinomoto :)

"Barley red bean"

This is the dessert that they have. This is the first time i see people mix barley and red bean together and it taste quite nice!

Nice bowl

Apart from serving nice food, the restaurant is also nicely done up, giving you a very comfortable atmosphere to enjoy your food. They have a little reading corner as well, but most of the reading material are health related.

Since it is an organic shop, the price are slightly higher than the "normal food" you get outside. To give you a rough idea, a bowl of herbal noodle is RM6.50 and the barley read bean is RM3.50. Come to think about it, it is almost similar same ask KL price, only that in KL you are paying that price for food that is not that healthy...Where to find this place? Taman Melaka Raya is where you need to go! :)

Pin Pin Xiang

This is one of the many coffee shops that family and I love to come. It was dad who brought us to this place many years ago and since then, it became one of our favourates. This coffee shop is called "Pin Pin Xiang" (mandarin), meaning "Nice taste". If you want the direct translation it would be "Taste, taste, frangance" :P Gee...sound so weird...Hahaha...

What is so special about them? Apart from the nice food (which i will go into detail later) is the atmosphere here. The shop is located along Jonker Street. Front part of the shop you can hear the cars passing by (traffic ain't that bad in the morning) and occasionally you can see old uncles/aunties cycle by slowly. At the back of the shop, you will hear the old black smith working on the iron. "Tong!" "Tong!" "Tong!" you can hear him working hard.

So what do they have here? The one on top of the list is the Pork-seafood noodle (pic below).

The standrad ingredients they have for the noodle soup are minced pork, pork intestine, liver, pork lard, prawns, small oysters and veggie. If you are not a pork intestine /liver person you can ask them not to add that in. You can have it with bee hoon, kuay teow, mee or mee sua. If you ever order this, i would recommend you to go for mee sua! If you are super health concious, then i warn you not to step into this shop! Hahahaha....The noodle soup is RICH, in the sense that rich in fats :P But taste guarantee BEST! The noodle comes as individual meal. So you may want to order according to the number of people who wants it.

The are other stuff that you can order as extra / side order. They have chicken chop and pork chop (pic below). This is quite different from the western style. They are normally deep fried and cooked with canned green peas, potato and some tomatoes. The sause is thick and nice! For a REAL chinese, they would say, "a bowl of white rice to go with the sauce will be a perfect meal!"

They also have a variety of fried vegetables. The one shown here is "choy sam" fried garlic. One of their nice veg is the fried bitter gourd. (i've never tasted it before coz i hate bitter gourd, but others who have tasted it said that it is nice)

Omelette! They have Prawn omelette, oyster omelette and normal omelette. So far i've tasted the oyster omelette and it is nice! Sorry no pics on that, cause i tasted it few days ago and my camera was not with me at that time :P

Another good one to try is the fried fish / pork with ginger and spring onion. It is SUPERB!

Well, once again, to eat here you need to have the patience to wait. Reason being, they don't mass produce your order, even if it is similar type of order. For example, the cook will do the noodle soup pot by pot. So if you order 5 mee sua soup, the cook will repeat the process 5 times to come up with 5 bowls of mee sua soup. Their style has become a trademark for them and because the food is nice, so people normaly don't mind the waiting :)

How to find this place? Easy. Look for the Orang Utan house (main branch), the coffee shop is just next to it across the street that is 10-step wide.

Porridge Steamboat

I am glad that now Malacca also have this porridge steamboat! If i am not mistaken, this is the one-and-only at the moment. I am so use to adding soup instead of porridge, so the first sight of seeing the lady top up the porridge into the pot was quite 'scary'. At the back of mind i was thinking "can we actually finish everything?" Alas, with 4 men in the family, everything got clean up pretty quick :)

Fresh SEAFOOD! and veggie!!

Pot of 'rojak" Hahahha...

This is the shop "Restaurant Da Jia Le" which means "everyone happy". They are located in Taman Melaka Raya and they only open at night. Best time to go 7pm. Anything later than that will be LONG-Q!

Apart from the steamboat, you can also place side order like "fried noodles" (any kind), "fried rice", "fried fish" (any how you would like the fish to be cooked), "fried veggie" etc. These extra are helpful especially if you are supper hungry.

Ikan Bakar...

Okai, i am back once again. I've been lazy blogging lately! Hahaha...mainly because work has been crazy and by the time i got home, the last thing i want to do is to park myself infront of the laptop again.

Today is aceptional becuase it is RAYA holiday! Hence, i decided to do some update for this site before it grows cobwebs..Hahha...

Few weeks back, family and I decided to have seafood! And off we go to Alai. Alai is about 20mins drive away from Malacca town. This is 'THE' place for nice and cheap seafood. This place only open at night and it is by the river mouth that join the river to the sea, so you can actualy smell the sea before reaching the place.

As seen from the picture below, you basically hand pick what you want from the stall. Good isn't it? Freshness of the stuff are GUARANTEED! They have different choices of fishes like ikan pari, tenggiri, cencaru, siakapetc. There are also prawns - tiger prawns, normal prawns, you choose. Shell fish - mussle, kerang and bamboo look shell fish, squid and crab!

Once you have picked what you want, you just need to tell the boss how you would like them to be cooked. You can have them in bakar style, sweet sour style or black sauce style, as long as you can come out with any style you want, they will try to accomodate and do it the way you want :)


After try-and-error, we finally conclude that for fish and prawns it is better to have them in bakar style. Mainly becuase, they don't put in any additional flavouring, so you can actually taste the original taste of the sweet and juicy meat!


This is how the ikan bakar look like. NICE!


Okai, this is the highlight of the meal, ikan pari goreng-masak cili! If it is not for the sake of health, we could have wack more than 2 ikan pari! What the chef did was he deep fry the ikan pari and then pour the chili sauce that was prepared seperately on top of the fish. As you bite into it, you get the juicy meat and the crispy skin! PERFECT!


Okai, I must say, to get a nice squid meal is quite challenging. We have tasted black-sauce sqiud, sweet sour squid (pic below) and deep fried squid, but none of them taste very nice. The only thing we have not try is to bakar them! So, i'll let you know how it taste like once we have tried that, or you can drop a note here if you have tried it :)

Apart from seafood, they also serve plain nasi lemak and otak-otak. Both are equally NICE! After Muar's otak-otak, i think this is the next best one.

Price wise, i think no worries. How expensive can it be when you are in Malacca! Hahahahha..Let me see, there were 7 of us (4 men, 3 ladies) we have 2 ikan pari, 4 ikan tenggiry, 1 kg + of prawns, 10 squids, 10 packs of nasi lemak, close to 100 sticks of otak-otak and 1 jug of ice-lemon tea and it total up to about RM130 plus minus.

The best time to visit this place is between 6:30pm-7:30pm.... you will get all the BIG and FRESH ones. How to get there? Hm... i think the best is to have a Malaccan with you, cause the direction to this place is quite tricky at night, unless you know Malacca VERY (1000X) well... :)

Porky Satay!!

Sun May Hiong Satay House - this is one of the few satay restaurant mend by Chinese. Most importantly is that they serve PORK! Where can you find PORK satay?

The meat is merinated with kunyit (yellow ginger) and some spices. It comes in smaller chunk, not like the satay Kajang where the meat are bigger pieces. Because of the small chunk of meat, it make it easy to eat. If you have big mouth, you just need to take one bite. The most two bites for people with smaller mouth :P hehehe...Not only that they serve pork, they also serve the spare parts like the pig intestine and liver. Chicken satay are also available, but if you are a REAL Chinese, you wouldn't want to waste stomach space on chicken satey :D

What makes it tasteSUPER yummy is the sauce! It is a mixture of chili sause, peanut and star fruits. They cooked these three ingredients together until it mix well. So you have some sourish sweet spicy taste. Yumm ..yumm... yummm....!

They also have ketupat. The ketupat are the REAL ones.... not those instant ketupat with plastic warp...I wonder whether they make it themself or they get from some other people. Cause so far, i have not seen them make any of those in their shop..Anyhow, the ketupat is also yummy! Me alone can wack 3-4 bigi at one go :P

It is quite affordable. RM0.40 one stick. The best time to go is about 11am...lesser crowd. If you go later, you just need to be patient to wait for a table.

So how to get there? Here is the address:

Sun May Hiong Satay House

50/50A, Jalan Kota Laksamana 1/1,

Taman Kota Laksamana.

75200 Melaka

Opening hour: 10am-7pm

Huang Chang Chicken Rice

Chicken rice ball, a MUST-EAT whenever you come to Malacca! It is also one of the trademark for Malacca. As most of us know there are many chicken rice ball restaurants around, so you must know which one to go, else you will end up eating something that is not nice and had a burnt on your wallet. Yes! Although food in Malacca is consider as cheap, but there are still some restaurant owners who miss used trademark name like “chicken rice ball” , “nyonya”, “original nyonya” etc. to attract customers. And believe me, there is a chicken rice ball shop in town that actually charge more than they should. Hint: They name themselve after the chicken rice ball and the A Famosa.

The one that I am going to introduce to you is not those that you can find in the town. This one is called Huang Chang Chicken Rice and it is in Melaka Baru, about 20 mins drive form the town.

Their chicken are nicely cooked, no trace of blood, very soft and easy to chew. It is normally serve with cucumbers, strips of ginger, light soya sauce and sesame oil. The rice ball is at its right size, slightly smaller than a ping pong ball. So, it is very easy to pop it into your mouth. To add more taste to the rice ball, you can dip it into the chili sauce and thick black soya sauce. Yum! Yum!

Pricing… let see, a meal for one person (8 rice ball + quarter chicken) is only RM2.80, in town it will be about RM3+. A meal for a family of 4 (half chicken + 20 rice ball + drinks) cost less than RM20. Once I brought a group of friends, there were 16 of us, we ordered 4 chickens, 110 rice ball, drinks (Chinese tea, can drinks, herbal tea) it only cost about RM64. Cheap eh? So don’t miss it if you ever come to Malacca.


How to get there? As you exit the Ayer Keroh toll, go straight, you will come to the first traffic lights (landmark: World Youth Foundation Building on the left), go straight, keep right, you will see a turning on your right. Turn right into the road, go straight, (landmark: mosque on the right, houses on the left), go straight, follow the road curving left and right until you come to a traffic light (landmark: Police station and quarters on the left, row of shops and Multimedia University infront of you), wait for the traffic lights and turn right. Go straight (landmark: Chinese cemetery on the right, SMK Munshi Abdullah & Petronas on the left) Turn left at the Petronas and continue going straight. You will come to a traffic light, go straight, keep right. You will come to another traffic light (landmark: Perodua on the right, Public Bank on the left), Turn right at the traffic lights, then take the first turning on your right and then immediately turn left again, you will see the shop right there. :) Hope you can find the place and enjoy the food!


The owner.

Fish porridge & "Hee Kiao"

This is one of my family favorite. When we were little, dad use to bring us for the fish porridge. The owner use to operate his stall by the road side opposite Rainessance Hotel (a.k.a Ramada Hotel). The space was small and cramp, however people from far and near will come to him for nice fish porridge. Back then, to secure a table, you will have to go really early, if not you must have the patience to wait in the queue.

Probably about 8 years ago, they decided to moved their business to the hawker center next to Grand Continental Hotel. Now there are ample seats for everyone. They also have a branch at Jalan Gajah Berang, opposite Select Star Hotel.

So what is so nice about this fish porridge?
I am sure all of us are quite familiar with the thick and ‘meshy’ porridge. This one is just the total opposite. The grains are not all mesh up, it is just slightly softer than rice, and the soup of the porridge is also of the clear type. It is served with slices of fresh fish meat and some chinese parsley. Add a little bit of pepper to the porridge and it is a perfect finishing for fragrance and taste! A bowl of standard fish porridge cost RM3.50. However it will cost you RM8 if you go for the high end fish like white ikan bawal.

Apart form the fish porridge they also sell the fish paste noodle. The fishball and fish paste are fresh so it is REALLY nice! For the noodle, it also comes with pork lard! (all you pork lard lovers do take note on this! Hahaha!). They have noodle, bee-hoon, glass noodle (tong fan) and kuey teow. I must tell you that the kuey teow is not like the normal hor-fan that you get in K.L. These are the thicker ones and they are a bit more oily. So, if you want less oil, then go for other noodles. A bowl of standard fish paste noodle cost only RM3.50. Very affordable :)

Our family still frequents the stall every now and then. During our growing up days, there were times that we were quite embarrass with the numbers of bowl that stacked on our table. You see, by default there will be 8 bowls for sure since there are 8 of us in the family, and dad will always order another 2 bowls of extra. Sometimes there will be more if the boys decided to have more. Now, we don’t really care if people were to stare at us for having so many bowls stacked on our table! No one can resist good food, right? Ha!

chinese herbs mutton soup

Yummmy! Yummmy!
This is the famous chinese herbs mutton soup at Jalan Bunga Raya. It is a good meal to go for if you are REALLY hungry in the early morning. The taste of the soup is just nice, not oily and the hearbs is not too overwhelming.

Normally rice is served together with the soup. So, that's why i said unless you are really hungry, else it will be a breakfast too heavy to have. Inside the soup you can find chunk of mutton, some parts are meaty bit, some are with the tenden. You can also find "tao kee" (bean curd), "tao fu pok" (fried bean curd ball) and chinese black fungus. They are quite generaous with it.

You can eat it just as it is or go with the chili sauce. The chili sauce is home-made. It is a mixture of blended chili with fermanted bean curd and lime juice. Yummy!!!

The man and the woman you see in the picture below is the owner. They have been there for more than 20 years. The stall used to mend by his father, and later on was passed on to him. Their business hour is from morning 'till about 2pm. Apart from selling the soup, they also sell chicken rice. I've never tasted their chicken rice, maybe you can try it and let me know whether or not it is nice!

To find them: [from Jonket Street] As you come down from the bridge, take the left turning (right turn lead you to the clock tower), once you take left turn, you will see chinese shop lots on both side of you, continue going straight until you see a junction on your left. (on you right you will see a hotel, slightly further front, you will Madam King Shopping center) Trun left, and you will see shops that sell fake flowers and bags on your left, continue to go straight (slowly) until you see some fruit stall on your left, further down you will see an old chinese coffee shop on your left. They are right there at the coffee shop :)

Putu-piring

Putu-piring is one of local specialties from the Malay community. The outer part of the 'kuih' is made of rice flour and the filling is made of palm sugar or famously known as Gula Melaka. It taste the best when it is still hot and fresh.

The best putu-piring in town is located at Jalan Tengkera. It is a home base business own by a Chinese family. You can find them faithfully selling the putu-piring almost every night except Sunday. It cost 70 cents per piece. They are very generous with the palm sugar and that makes the kuih very tasty!

Putu piring is a perfect dessert after a light dinner in the evening :)