Taste Ipoh, Raffles City

Some food from Taste Ipoh (#B1-81 Raffles City, 252 North Bridge Road). As the name of the eatery would suggest, they're doing Ipoh styled food and according to them, the menu's a "celebration of Ipoh's culinary heritage".

Tried their crispy poh piah which has dried shrimp (hae bi) flavour in it. We like this rendition better than the one from Auntie Mei's Crispy Popiah even though it didn't have as much crunchy bits. Did have more sweet sauce and was more competently wrapped.

That's something called Fragrant Spicy Dry Curry Chicken (Varuval) Bee Hoon Mee - not bad. Not understanding the 'varuval' part in the name but I'm guessing it's got to do with the chicken. Texture from the noodles were pleasantly firm and we kinda enjoyed the dark gravy flavoured with curry from the "dry curry" chicken.

Pretty good tasting Ipoh white kopi c. Coffee's fairly robust with adequate fragrance.

Dapo’ Khaleeda, Taman Abad, Johor Bahru

Big breakfast at Dapo’ Khaleeda (102, Jalan Dato Sulaiman, Taman Abad, 80250 Johor Bahru, tel : +60 18-776 6853).

This place serves breakfast/lunch and sells frozen cooked products.

A few items are on self service. Like their nasi lemak which one can help themselves with before heading to the counter for payment. Got one with paru belado, fried egg, fried chicken and some serunding daging. The last item's beef floss. Rice looked like basmati. Pretty tasty in an old school-ish way.

Lontong's also self service. Pretty lemak gravy there. This was topped with serunding daging as well. Not bad.

Satay can be ordered from their menu. That's chicken and maybe mutton. They're chunky and the meat on the skewer is alternated with chunks of fat. Gravy was deliciously thick and nutty with crushed peanuts.

One of they items they're known for is roti sarang burung. It's a variant of roti canai shaped like a bird's nest with a couple of eggs in the middle. One can get the regular version or with topping. This one's has sardines. Not bad tasting. Can't really make out what's that curry on the side.

Underwhelming teh tarik.

Pine Chicken Rice (松香鸡饭), Taman Melodies, Johor Bahru

Heard good things about Pine Chicken Rice (161 Jalan Beringin, Taman Melodies, 80250 Johor Bahru, tel : +60 13-715 3211).

Lemon tea's pleasantly astringent.

Coffee's pretty decent too. Not as aromatic as I usually prefer but it's pretty robust.

That one sauce that we've never encountered before at chicken rice shops/stalls is the green one.

Got ourselves the lower quarter of their poached chicken which was basically dark meat. Bird's smooth, firm and tender. Nice.

Rice was nicely flavoured from their stock and not excessively greasy. There's adequate savouriness that one could inhale with or without the chilli sauces. Soup's pleasantly herbal.

Speaking of sauces...the red's not like the one back home. It's less punchy, less sweet and didn't seem to be lime-y but still pretty good tasting. The green one's deliciously lime-y. Nice.

Egg.

Otah's pretty good. Heard it's not made in house but that don't make us think lesser of it. Plenty of little chunks of fish in it.

In essence, Pine Chicken Rice was nothing short of competent. Would not mind coming back at all.

Murtabak Majid Special Cheese No.1, Kampung Kurnia, Johor Bahru

We came to Murtabak Majid Special Cheese No.1 (38 Lot, 5581, Jalan Kurniawan, Kampung Kurnia, 80250 Johor Bahru) for their murtabak. They are known for ones with cheese.

There's a choice of chicken, mutton or beef. Sadly, they were out of mutton when we visited 🥲. So we ended up with the beef. One can choose between biasa (regular/small), special (medium/double layered) or jumbo (presumably large). This was the special daging cheese.

Not as cheesy as what we saw online but still pretty cheesy. Appearances reminded me just a little of the murtabak that one can get from Zam Zam minus the mutton crusted exterior. Pretty good tasting, hefty portioned and not overly oily.

What I particularly liked were the finely diced onions in them which resulted in a mouthfeel and taste which I enjoyed - similar to the ones at Zam Zam.

There's some vegetable dal and sliced cucumbers that you could help yourself to.

Bandung. 

Yit Foh Restaurant (益和云吞面), Taman Abad, Johor Bahru

Read about Yit Foh's (153 Jalan Harimau, Taman Abad, 80250 Johor Bahru) wanton mee and it seemed that there were polarised opinions on them despite descriptions that sounded pretty good to me. We came for breakfast to find out for ourselves. 😬

The wanton mee comes in 3 sizes. This was the small. Note to self: get the medium next time. One can choose between mee pok...

...and their regular egg noodles. Both are made by Yit Foh and have great texture. Saucing was light and savoury and their chilli packs some heat. Nice. Char siew's....they are what they are. Soak in sauce for better eating.

Wantons were light (as opposed to densely packed) and actually not bad. 

We got a side of chicken chop. Wouldn't say that it's no good but I don't think we liked so much crunch on the batter.

Kopi's decent. Hainanese style, not the most aromatic but pretty thick.

99° Durian Culture (榴莲文化), Jalan Dhoby, Johor Bahru

Came across 99° Durian Culture (14 Jalan Dhoby, Bandar Johor Bahru, 80000 Johor Bahru) by chance and were intrigued with their durian stuff. Like beverages, nasi lemak...or one can simply just eat durian here. I'm guessing that they're relatively new since we didn't recall seeing them the last time we were in the area.

Taro MSW milk. The proprietor mentioned using durian dust. Couldn't taste durian in it but it was a decent taro milk.

The other drink we had which I was initially skeptical about was their MSW coffee. The coffee looked thin and weak. But hell yeah this was awesome.

The espresso they put it was pretty strong, in spite of appearance, that the flavour of the coffee was well balanced with the milk and MSW pulp. I'd come back for this. 

I mentioned nasi lemak earlier.

This was their MSW nasi lemak. The durian was folded into the coconut rice.

Was bittersweet with a light savoury undertone and reminded me of Peranakan kuehs. Love the discernible MSW flavour in it. Not to mention that they did much much better ayam berempah here than Ayam Gepok Anakmak.

Restoran Sekee (亞華粿條), Jalan Segget, Johor Bahru

We've walked past Restoran Sekee (49C Jalan Segget, Bandar Johor Bahru, 80000 Johor Bahru) a number of times while we were in the vicinity and have been curious but haven't stepped in until now.

Cooking is still being done with charcoal here. 

What they're known for is kuey teow soup. Or kuey teow dry if one prefers so.

The dry option came with some vinegary chilli sauce. That and light soya sauce, some lard and fried shallot oil. Love those smooth slurpy kuey teow. There's a nice rice-y flavor to them.

Pretty darn good with their sliced chilli.

The pork soup that came with the kuey teow has pig liver, sliced pork, minced pork and pig kidneys. We were told that one can swap the latter with oysters which we did. The proprietor mentioned that these oysters were from Muar. They were fat, briny and bursty with no strong or off putting oyster-ly flavour. Nice.

Broth was light with a porcine sweetness.

Nasi Lemak Strawberry by Zaza @ Banafee Express CIQ, Johor Bahru

There's a strawberry flavoured nasi lemak which we came across at Banafee Express CIQ (LOT A1 aras 3 bangunan, JB Sentral, Jln Jim Quee, Bukit Chagar, Johor Bahru 80300).

Certainly warranted a double take. We did. And more.

Not entirely sure how this worked. Tried the pink rice on its own and I wasn't quite sure what I was tasting. Maybe it was just a strawberry flavour I was imagining. The sambal was spicy and also a bit sweeter than usual. Don't know if the sweetness from the sambal brought out the strawberry flavour in the rice or that the sambal itself has strawberries.

In any case, there was a discernible strawberry flavour if you ate the nasi lemak with the sambal.