Roti Canai at Kompleks Niaga Limbongan

We took a trip to Melaka some months ago to visit a friend who was working there, and she brought us to this amazing super good value for money breakfast place (to a Singaporean at least) near Klebang. It was a roti canai (or prata to Singaporeans) place that was swarming with people on a Sunday morning, and we all know that crowds are always a good thing. It turned out to be RM60 for 7 people, including coffees and teas all round.

The production house inside the kitchen

We ordered enough roti for 7 people in various varieties - kosong, telur and bawang

I really liked the roti - it was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

My friend also ordered a variety of curries - fish gills, mutton, cuttlefish and stingray - to go with the roti.

I didn't touch the gills.

After breakfast we went to the Klebang coconut shake shack just a few minutes drive down the road. Really yummy on a very hot sunny day.

We also had some lekur to share.

Crowds even at 11am

Guess they use real coconut there

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

Kota Tinggi and Penggarang Eating

A bunch of greedy friends and I headed to JB for some good eating one sunny Sunday, starting off bright and early for breakfast at a roadside bak kut teh stall in Kota Tinggi. It's past the road to Desaru, identifiable by a lot of cars parked outside a shack, as well as the 100plus sign.

Half of the spread that we ordered

 

Tau pok and golden mushrooms

The pork ribs that came with tau kee on top as well as canned button mushrooms

There was also some liver/kidney stuff that looked yuck but my friends ate them up

The ribs were pretty good - they were soft and meaty.

The pork trotter was also quite nice, but a little salty

Nice with rice

Everything cooked with charcoal  - made a big difference to the aroma

After whiling away the time, we headed to Penggarang for a seafood lunch.

This place was meant to be good for lobsters - they were kept in tanks outside

We ordered some fried kangkong - very ordinary

We ordered quite a few other things as well

First up was the lobster with a herbal sauce - it was very light in flavour, and it was good that the lobster was fresh so the flavours showed up very nicely

Sambal lala

Very fresh as well - and not sandy.

A seafood tofu mix - ordinary, but decent

The shimmering sand lobster, coated with some flour. This was more tasty than the herbal version. Think a salted egg version would really be quite brilliant.