Ipoh Town Outskirt Perak Part 2 Perak North Road Trip Food Trail By Best Restaurant To Eat

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

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Golden Sweet Home Restaurant @Bandar Menjalara Kepong Kuala Lumpur - A haven for Local Hawker Street Food

 

Once a while, we do make food trips to try out local hawker street food around Malaysia. Recently we came to know about this place in Bandar Menjalara Kepong that has more than 26 hawker selling various popular local hawker street food in one premise. So, the whole food trip at one place.

+BestRestaurant ToEat was invited to taste out some of the local hawker street food which some of the vendors here have more than umpteen years of cooking skills in these special dishes. The restaurant is Golden Sweet Home Restaurant located at 19, Jalan 9/62A, Bandar Menjalara, Kepong Kuala Lumpur and is open from 6.00am to 11.30pm.

To find this coffeeshop is quite easy as it is located just opposite the Tesco hypermarket in Bandar Menjalara, Kepong. You will not be lost, as there are many eateries and coffeeshop on this road.

We were first introduced to try out the local coffee that are served here. The coffee that was served has got that strong aroma and the local coffee kick which we like. You can order either the hot (RM1.60) or cold (RM2.30) local coffee.

For the first dish, we tried the Canton Style Roast Duck. The young cook has more than 10 years of roasting duck using the Canton Style. The duck is marinated with some "Tong Kuai" which gives a strong herbal flavour.

Our order is for a quarter duck portion  (RM16.00) which is just nice for 2 person. The duck skin was perfectly roasted while the duck meat was still juicy and succulent served on a bed of cucumber. Flavour wise; it is close to the Salted Roast Duck which we are quite accustomed to but less salty.

You can either order your duck with Hakka noodle (RM3.00) or plain white rice (RM1.50). In, our case we ordered it with the Hakka noodle. We like the texture of the noodle as the noodle does not have any boric acid taste. It went perfectly with the sauce that was used to match it. 

For our second dish, the cook here has more than 8 years experience when it comes to Fried Kway Teow of which six years are in this coffeeshop since its inception; a testament of the quality of the noodles that it serves.

The version of this Fried Kway Teow (RM5.50) is; the Kuala Lumpur style which has a thicker dark soya sauce and served with cockles and prawns unlike the Penang style which has chinese sausage too. We like the "wok hei" of this fried Kway Teow and you can see that it is not very oily (another plus point). 

The next order was for the Fried Chicken Chop rice set (RM8.00). The cook which hails from Ipoh have created 3 flavours of these Fried Chicken Chop (whole leg) which is the Original, Teppan-Sesame and Salt & Pepper

We had 2 version of it which is the first is the Teppan - Sesame flavour. It comes with a special sauce which has a tinge of slight sourish taste (quite similar to the taste of the worcheshire sauce but is not) and topped with sesame seed.

Followed by the Salt & Pepper flavour, which is a simple marinade of salt and pepper with rosemary herbs. Although it was very plain, it was indeed very much more flavourful than the one we had earlier. It was very tasty just eating as it is. For order of the set, customer can also choose a sauce to go with it. The sauce are mushroom, black pepper, BBQ sauce, garlic butter and thai sauce

Next, we had the Fish ball noodle (RM6.50). The fishball are made by the owner which has more than 20 years of experience of making fishball. For the fishball he uses only the Sai To Fish to make it; while the fish paste is a combination of Sai To and Mackerel.

We like the bouncy texture of the fishball and the fish paste; the soup broth although tasty was a little tad of saltiness for our taste; other than that it is just nice. 

I am a great fan of Fruit Rojak (RM4.50); which is our next dish that we ordered. The rojak here is 100% vegetarian in that there are no shrimp paste or shrimp used to prepare this rojak. In place of the prawn crackers, she uses the crispy fried dough stick.

According to the owner; she uses a special secret home made paste for this rojak. Our first thought was that; how could one make a tasty fruity rojak without shrimp paste. On our first taste, we didn't believe that there is no shrimp paste; as it was really tasty and mimic that special rojak taste . We like the fact that the peanuts are also freshly grounded giving out a very nutty tasty unlike those mass produce peanuts.

Our last dish is also another vegetarian dish which is the "Hakka Lui Cha". For the Hakka, this is a must eat dish. The cook uses purple cabbage with other condiments like onion, Choy Poh, fried dried shrimp, peanuts,long beans and Choy Sum. While the broth is made up from ingredients such as mints, peanuts, sesame, anchovies, basil leaves and tea leaves.

In the evening and night time there are different store that are opened, among some of the food served are the Yong Tau Foo



Ikan Bakar



Fried Oyster



Claypot Chicken Rice and other store.

The next time you yearn for some simple and tasty street food you can try out some of these dishes which are served at Golden Sweet Home Restaurant @Bandar Menjalara Kepong.

Gossip Time Restaurant @ Paramount Garden Petaling Jaya - Malaysian Street Food and Steamboat Review

If you have been to Cameron Highlands, you would probably come across Gossip Corner which serves its' popular wantan noodles and Big Burger Challenge. After more than 3 years operating in Cameron Highlands, they decided to spread its wings to Petaling Jaya and with that, they started Gossip Time 3 months ago which is located at 5, Jalan 20/14 Paramount Garden 46300 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

For those that are not familiar with what Gossip Corner serves, then this blog post will highlight some of these special offering to the PJ folks. The only difference is that at the Cameron outlet; no pork are served there whereas here at Gossip Time - pork are served.

Gossip Time @ Petaling Jaya is a very simple no frill cafe style setup; its' key mission is to deliver quality food at very reasonable prices as attested by our food review session.

We started off, with the Special Curry Chicken Set (RM8.90) which is served with a bowl of rice, papadum, fried eggs and soup of the day; touted by some of its customers as the No 1 curry in Petaling Jaya; we definitely have to give this a try. According to the chef, the curries serves at Gossip Time does not contain any santan (coconut milk); so for those who are particular about cholesterol and the bad effect of santan, you will now be able to enjoy a nice curry. The curry is cooked with a spices, lemongrass and fresh milk which is very fragrant and was a perfect match to the white rice which is served with the curry. Loves the potatoes which was cooked to a soft texture.

Next on is another house specialty, which is the Gossip Prawn Wantan Mee - Dry  (RM8.90 Small, RM9.90 Big). We find the texture of the noodles to be firm and have a bouncy texture. A check with the Chef reveals that the wantan noodles is specially made by its master (more than 40 years noodles making experience) and does not contain any boric acid. The wantan noodles are mixed with soya sauce and topped with minced meat.

For those that prefer the soupy version you can order the Gossip Prawn Wantan Mee - Soup  (RM8.90 Small, RM9.90 Big). We like the soup based as the chef uses pork bones which is boiled for a few hours. The creamy based look of the soup attest to this claims and it was very delicious. We love the big size wantan which has a prawn in it and was perfectly matched with the meat filling. For RM8.90 a bowl, it is very reasonable price considering the 3 chunky wantan that comes with the mee.

For those that love a little spicy taste on their wantan mee, you can try out the Curry Chicken Wantan Mee  (RM8.90 Small, RM9.90 Big). Unlike the earlier curry chicken, the soup based has a lighter broth and less spicy. Gossip Time also serves a Dry Curry version too.

Another specialty noodles that are served here is the Spicy Noodle King - Dry (RM9.90 Small, RM10.90 Big). This is not for the faint hearted but really for those seeking a real thrill of spiciness in their noodles. It has a very strong after taste of spiciness that lingers around your mouth and throat long after you finish your meal. According to the chef, he uses 7 special ingredients with chillies of different type to concoct this special spicy sauce.

Next on is the Special Satay Sauce Chicken Chop Rice (RM14.50). The chicken chop is fried to a crisp and then topped with an in-house made special peanut satay sauce. If you are a real fan of satay, this dish is just for you.

For the less adventurous, you can have the Mushroom Chicken Rice (RM8.90). This dish is similar to Braised Chicken with potatoes but here the chicken meat is braised with an add on of mushroom and fried potatoes.

The next specialty is the Gossip Pork/Chicken Burger King (RM24.90). This burger has many layers; Sandwiched in between the big bun are slices of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, pineapple, omelette and a piece of chicken chop with mayo dressing.

Started from Gossip Corner in Cameron Highland, Gossip Time continued; a new legend to find the quickest Gossip Time Burger King Champion. Herewith are some of the past challengers.

The current Champion in Gossip Time is 5 minutes and 21 seconds. If you are ready to take this challenge, then you can head over to Gossip Time. Tell the manager that you want to take up the Burger King Challenge. The record breaker will be given to order anything on the menu for that day absolutely free of charge.

For some light snack, you can also order the Chicken Wings (RM8.90/serving of 4 pieces)

The chicken wings are pre marinated with special ingredients and fried to a crispy golden brown while the meat was still juicy on the inside.

For dinner, Gossip Time also offers a special steamboat offering of 2 soup base which is the Pork Bone and Special Spicy Broth.

The price for a per pax steamboat set is RM24.90 - minimum order is 2 pax. The Pork Bone soup is of a clear type and was flavourful to slurp at it is. Once, the delicacies are simmered into the broth, you can start to taste the flavourful broth.

The set cor 2 pax comes with prawns, slices of chicken, slices of pork meat, fish, meatball, enoki mushroom and etc. For the steamboat set, you can order unlimited vegetables of the day. So, for those that loves vegetables in their steamboat, you can eat your heart out with the accompany broth.

The other broth is the Special Spicy Broth - this is quite spicy for me but is a welcome change from many steamboat restaurant that offers Tom Yum broth. Nevertheless for those that loves the spicy level can opt for this broth which goes well with the beehoon; as it will absorb the spicy flavour into the beehoon.

Gossip Time also offers a special set lunch from Monday to Friday during this period. Each set comes with Free Soup, Drinks and Fruits; a real value deal; from as low at RM9.90 onwards. Now, you don't need to cramp at coffee shop at Paramount Garden during lunch as Gossip Time is fully air conditioned to offers you a comfortable dining environment without burning a hole in your pocket.