Eating in Tangkak, Malacca and Johor Bahru

We recently made a trip up to Malacca with some university friends, and a large part of the weekend focused on food, with the itinerary planned around breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner with the time in between spent waiting for food to be digested so we could move on to our next meal. 

First stop was for beef noodles at Restoran Kuang Fei in Tangkak, although I would have been quite happy to have made it the second stop after Yong Peng :P. We first went there in Dec 2011 after a trip to Malacca, and found it to be really good quality. 

I started off with the first bowl of kuey teow having a mixture of various beef parts, including tripe and fatty brisket. The soup was brilliant, with an amazing beef stock flavour. This was a pretty small bowl, so....

I went for a second bowl of bee hoon with fresh sliced beef.  On the whole, I think the version with various beef parts was better, because the lean beef was rather hard.

The cooking area out in front. The beef noodle shop is located along a whole street of cookie shops. We went to Hua Bee to pick up some tau sa pia.

Next stop- Malacca. We headed straight for the Restoran Sin Yin Hoe oyster omelette for a tea time snack, and were most relieved to find the cook still frying away.

Heaven on a plate, with tiny plump juicy oysters on top.

Another shot of the oysters

We shared 2 large plates among the 7 of us - there was more food waiting to be eaten.

We headed to Jonker St for chendol after that.

Best chendol in Malacca, in our opinion, just opposite the Aik Cheong stall.

We tried the assam laksa but it was disappointing.

The chendol, however, was as good as we remembered. It was all about the gula melaka - I wish they had a liquid version. We bought some from the stall to bring home.

Chock full of beans

We went back to the hotel and waited until it was time to head out for dinner. One of our friends had heard that Amy's Heritage Nyonya Cuisine was reputable, so we went to check them out. When we got there, they said they were out of fish and squid, which was a good sign because it meant that it was popular (or a bad sign because they had really bad planning...we chose to believe the former!) 

We started with kueh pie ti - this was very yummy. It appeared that the shells were made manually since they were all shaped differently. The filling was delicious. 

We shared a hee peow soup - this was pretty tasty as well. No MSG, the shopowner declared to us.

 A pretty good bowl of soup.

These were some of the other things we ordered....

The udang masak nanas was one of the best I've ever eaten, except for what my dad used to cook. Super lemak and tasty, and excellent with white rice. The prawns were large and fresh. 

The ayam buah keluak was reasonable, considering there was no pork used. It was probably one of the better ones eaten in a restaurant. Nothing can compare to my dad's buah keluak. Except maybe my grandma's version.

Lady's fingers with a spicy salad/chutney mix. This was pleasant.

Can't go too far wrong with sambal kangkong.

The sambal udang petai was really tasty too, but too much udang and too little petai!

And at the end of the day, including drinks and dessert, the bill for 7 people came up to RM 222. We were absolutely flabbergasted. I still feel overwhelmed thinking about the amazing value for money and good quality food there. 

We were even talking about it during breakfast the next morning. We were recommended Donald and Lily, which was near our hotel.

Empty at 10.30am, packed shoulder-to-shoulder at 12.00pm.

We shared a plate of fruit and taukwa rojak - this was interesting but the sauce was not what we were expecting. It was like a combination of tomato and chilli sauce.

We tried various things - the mee siam was slightly less nutty than what we were used to in Sg.

And their curry laksa was really good.

Lemak, spicy, and tasty.

More like a dry mee siam version.

We tried the mee rebus too. Wasn't too impressed. I thought the gravy wasn't think enough.

But to each his own, I guess.

We stopped by Hua Mui, a Hainanese coffeeshop in Johor Bahru, for tea at 3pm on the way back to Singapore after leaving Melaka around 12 noon. Seriously old school, and we were very pleased with the find. It's located right at the junction of Jalan Trus and Jalan Dhoby in the old downtown part of the city.

We had to sit upstairs since the 1st floor was full. They use a pulley to bring up drinks and food from the 1st floor kitchen.

Kopi and bandung.

Kaya buns and butter buns. These were very very nice, with the buns slightly crisp on the outside and very soft and fluffy on the inside.

French toast-  didn't quite enjoy this as much.

But their chicken chop was brilliant - crispy skin, firm and juicy meat and really yummy gravy. Just steer clear of the fake green peas.

Addresses:

Tangkak Beef Noodles 东甲牛腩面

20 Jalan Solok, Tangkak, Johor

Amy Heritage Nyonya Cuisine

75, Jalan Melaka Raya 24, Taman Melaka Raya, Malaysia

Tel: +60 (06) 286 8819

Open Tuesday to Sunday 11.30am-2.30pm and 6pm-10pm (closed Mondays)

Donald and Lily's

No. 16 (Ground Floor),

Jalan KSB 1,

Taman Kota Shahbandar,

75200 Melaka.

Restoran Hua Mui 华美茶餐室

Address: 131 Jalan Trus 

80000 Johor Bahru

Restaurant Andre

The husband and I went to Andre almost 2 months ago for his birthday dinner, thanks to me losing a bet with him that I thought I was sure to win. The entire episode, which cost me almost $800 in dinner expenditure, has left me extremely scarred, and I now no longer make any more bets with him.

We had a Friday night booking which we rang up 2 weeks prior to make, which surprised us since we called up shortly after the top restaurant list came out, and the restaurant was pretty empty when we got there. It filled up after, but it still didn't feel very full. 

Which suited us fine, since we were all geared up to try Singapore's top restaurant. A lot has been said and written about Andre Chiang's Octa-Philosophy, which frankly felt like a lot of complicated words that didn't make a lot of sense to me when put together. But we were game and waiting to be impressed.

The part that got me most uncomfortable was how well-behaved, cultured, polite and quiet we felt we had to be. Not quite us, actually.

The amuse bouches came - this was masala chicken skin

Popcorn vanilla

Porcini crisps with chocolate soil and patatas bravas

Lobster sandwich

PURE - a mixture of seafood with no seasoning, including amaebi, ocean trout, spanish palamos, wild herbs and normandy mussels. We had a 2011 Loire Valley sauv blanc to go with the meal, and it was excellent.

SALT - comprising sea lettuce (isn't this just seaweed?), shimeji mushrooms, apples, caviar on top of an oyster tartare.

BREAD (not one of the octa items)

ARTISAN - Smoked Kyoto eggplant with crisp duck tongues and salsify.

SOUTH - Apparently inspired by what must have been a trip to Montpellier, comprising 2 stacks of interlocking plates. The first was risotto with spanish mackeral, pan-seared seabass, and kampachi with bisque foam.

The second was persimmon, tomato sorbet, gazpacho, seaweed, hirame,

TEXTURE - Brittany blue lobster with gnocchi and truffle on a scallop cream

A close up, with the caviar

UNIQUE - grilled French artichoke and a Japanese barracuda fish.

MEMORY - This was the highlight of my meal. Foie gras jelly with black truffle coulis.

Too little, and gone too fast. Definitely appropriately named.

I have not tasted a better foie gras+truffle combi, and I doubt I ever will.

TERROIR - rabbit done rare, wrapped in pancetta with squash puree and charred leeks.

The first dessert was freeze-dried wildberries, honey ice cream, and berry mousse.

The second was a chocolate dessert that I don't remember much of, apart from ice cream and chocolate soil bits.

The Petit fours included madeleines, popcorn with popping candy and fruit pastilles.

And these little sorbet balls which neither my husband and I can recall the flavour of

Our verdict - excellent food, but it definitely came at a very high price. After factoring in 2 glasses of wine and taxes, the bill for 2 came to almost $800. Which was more than what we paid for our entire Bali holiday.  The same amount of money buys an economy class seat to Australia on Emirates, or feeds and educates a child in Batam for more than 1 year. So while we were grateful we had the means to enjoy a meal like that, it was something that we would never repeat, because it felt so wrong to have spent so much money on something so temporal.  No more bets. EVER. (especially if I'm going to lose them).

Plus, at this age, having really good zi char or seafood at a casual coffeeshop where they give you wine glasses without charging corkage, with a rowdy bunch of friends is what we've realised makes us really happy anyway.