There are many food to eat in Ipoh, Perak. This part 2 is a compilation of the outer Ipoh Perak Food Trail which is the villages, where these places have equally famous food especially to the local folks.
Click here to go to our Part 1 Ipoh Road Trip. With that Best Restaurant To Eat continues the Ipoh Perak Road Trip Food Trail by first visiting the Pasir Pinji Village. Over here, you practically goes into the home i.e some are pre war kampung houses.
The first station is in Jalan Pasir Pinji 5; famed for it's Chee Cheong Fun, I was here back about 20 years ago, of course during that time it was even more kampung but now the house has been renovated and one has to take a queue number to enjoy this simple dish. You have to go there around 1pm when they opened.
There are 3 sauce flavours for this Chee Cheong Fun, the first is the soya sauce with shallot oil - simple and taste most natural.
while the second is with the sweet sauce.
and the third one is the mixture of sweet sauce plus chillies sauce (you can order your level of spiciness here. One of the thing about the Chee Cheong Fun here is the texture and quality - the Chee Cheong Fun is embedded by fried dried shrimp which you don't get much these days.
Next, we went to the Pasir Pinji Rojak. There were already a crowd when we reached there; as usual we dutifully taken our number and sit to wait. The wait was more than 45 minutes before we were served.
Here, there is no rush, the owner painstaking do one plate per round, so if one guy comes and order 5 pack, he will do it individually, this is to ensure the consistency and quality which was evident in our plate of these rojak, Unlike the vendors in KL, where they will do up as many as packs as possible in one round.
Taste wise, it was very good, the prawn paste was just the right flavour with a strong tinge of grounded belacan aroma.
After that, we were recommended to try out the Ice Jelly by the main street of Pasir Pinji, This place is just opposite the Pasir Pinji market.
There are actually 2 store here, we realise this after we ordered, nevertheless we tried both shop and the verdict was similar, one had a harder jelly compares with the other but it was a real thirst quencher for us on that hot day. Make sure you see that shop which is selling from the cart.
Next, we proceeded to try out another famed food here which is the Hong Kee Ma Chee and the peanut dessert (Fa Sang Wu). Taste wise the Fa Sang Wu was ok, but for the price of RM3 for a super small bowl, it was really expensive even to KL standard. My favourite Fa Sang Wu in a pasar malam in KL is 3 times more but at just only RM2.20.
But what disappoint me more is the Ma Chee, The serving was about 10 pieces or less and cost RM3.00 with very little peanuts and you can still taste the glutinous rice. Sorry, I did not take any photo of the both the dish as I was really pissed off and surprised by the so little serving.
Pasir Pinji is also famed for its Yong Tau Foo, and with that our next stop was the Big Tree. When we arrived the place was literally pack and people were queuing to scoop up whatever fried stuff that was put on the serving table.
This is another great disappointment as the stuff food was very oily, tasteless and costly. A check later showed that all the customer there are really tourist from out of town, This is another ripped off.
After the 2 last disappointment, we headed to Gunung Rapat for the famed Heong Phean. The first shop that we went; was closed, so we headed to another one which is 2 streets away.
Upon entering the villages house, we could see a man working on the specially design stove, where we witness first hand the making of the Heong Phean. We could see there are a lot of coconut shell in the compound and a check later reveal that it is used to fire up the stove.
Imagine, your biscuit is cooked with these coconut shell. It was rather eye opening and this special coconut infused flavours are ingrained into each and every biscuit. The result; you can really taste the smokey coconut taste with every bite of this biscuit compared to the normal one.
After that, we made our way for dinner at another village which is in Bercham, here we encountered a very rude owner that does not have a courtesy to appreciate his client, he is the type which is money minded i.e serving big table ie. those with a big group first. This is the first time we encountered such arrogant owner, I suppose his business is so good that he can get away with it.
This place called Restoran Rasa Lain, which was recommended by one of our friend to try out is the Tong Fun Crab. This dish is RM100.00
followed by the Cheese Prawns (RM60.00).
and the Steamed Lala (RM25.00)
and the Steamed Fish Ball (RM13,00). We are definitely not going to come here again with this kind of service.
Our conclusion is that Ipoh is surely catching up on prices with the KL counterpart, the difference is getting narrower over the years. Moreover since the influx of tourist from other states, businesses here has grown tremendously and it is evident wherever we go, there are 2 things that is common that we come across which is a traffic jam (never before I have experienced the jam in Ipoh – at some time it was easily worse than KL especially in the town centre) and a queue (almost all the outlet that we went) for food; some cumulating to a wait of more than 45 to 60 minutes for your food to be served. But what is worse is the arrogant level of some of these outlet operators which has pale in comparison with those that I have experienced some years back.
We used to enjoy the tranquillity of Ipoh, in that it used to be a nice place; to have some really nice food and leisure time to enjoy the scenery of this tin mining town, but reality kick in and we spent almost the entire time waiting for our food to be served instead; so there were literally no leisure time at all for our planned sightseeing.
Read about our Ipoh Town Part 1 Road Trip Food Trail
Explore Best Restaurant Other Food Trail
