Sukico

Mr Lim Kit Siang described the food served in this restaurant "vintage Hainanese cuisines". I may be wrong, I believe this veteran opposition leader is Hainanese. And he most definitely is a very busy man. His blog is almost totally of serious political stuffs. Yet he took time off to recommend Sukico to his readers.

Sukico is a small quaint restaurant in PJ Uptown. "Suki" in Hainanese apparently refers to a family or fellow Hainanese and "co" means brother. It is located a few shops away from the Uptown Public Bank on Jalan SS21/60. It had been quite awhile since we last visited the shop. We started patronizing the place after we read about it in Mr. Lim's blog. It used to be a bakery mart cum restaurant - selling baking ingredients as well as serving food. But now the bakery mart side of the shop is gone. It is now exclusively a restaurant.

The place is simple, pleasant and unpretentious. The crowd was surprisingly good. They have a celebrity corner - with pictures of some apparently well known patrons who, I am afraid, I did not recognize - including an Elvis wannabe.

But Mr. Lim's endorsement is unmistakable.

In our few visits to this shop, we did not meet the owner Cowboy Tan, mentioned in Mr. Lim's blog. We had always been attended to by a sweet old auntie, who I believe is Mrs. Cowboy Tan.

You have to be patient and cool when you dine in this restaurant, for it is not well known for its efficiency and good service. The place is obviously under-staffed. And the auntie is often muddled and forgetful. Do not be irritated if the service is slow, or if the wrong dish is served on your table, or if your drinks do not arrive. Many customers I observed, were very tolerant. I have seen customers passing dishes of food to the correct tables when they were wrongly delivered to them. It is really difficult to get angry with a sweet old lady like her.

At our last visit, we ordered a potpourri of dishes - sharing and tasting a bit of each. Mr. Lim had recommended the claypot lamb stew. I have tasted it before and believe me, it was very good. We ordered two pots to share. But sadly they were sold out. We settled for the chicken stew instead, which was equally delicious. The stew was thick and flavorful. I tasted a lot of spices in it. I believe this is a typical Hainanese stew.

 

We also shared a chicken chop, which was served with vege, salad, fries and mushroom sauce. It was old-fashionably nice.

 

Likewise the fish fillet...

And the lamb chop was real yummy. The portion was generous and the mint sauce that complemented it was superb.

We also had some Asian fares - starting with the Hainanese fried mee. It tasted better than it looked. The gravy was the winning grace.

We also had a couple of plates of Hokkein mee. They looked messy. But like the Hainanese mee, they were surprisingly good.

Finally, we had some veges which were quite ordinary.

Ole to Hainanese cooking and thanks to Sukico and Mr. Lim.

Hainanese Yut Kee

Yut Kee is probably one of the best known Hainanese coffee shop in Kuala Lumpur. It has been featured in many magazines and much has been written about it in blogs and websites. I googled it and the list was endless.

 

This makan place is located on Jalan Dang Wangi in KL. It is at the corner of a row of old shop houses. Getting there is easy, It is not too far and on the opposite side of the road from the Dang Wangi police station. Around it are ample parking places.

The proprietor (with dark t-shirt, white collar below) told me that his shop is 82 years old. It was set up in 1928 and apparently over the decades nothing very much has changed. 

 

It is a family business that has been handed down to him through several generations.

 

There are several things in the shop that are legacies of its historical past. Like this antique safe..

... and this fan and radio.

The place is often packed and sharing a table with some strangers is the norm.

 

The place serves a good variety of food. The choices are all written on the wall.

Perhaps their most famous and popular offering is the roast pork roll. It is pork belly, rolled and roasted with the skin to a perfect golden brown.

 

It was served with an apple sauce, in thin slices. The skin was absolutely fabulous - crispy and aromatic. The meat was soft and succulent and does not have too much fat. Roast pork par excellence. 

I had a bowl of beef noodle in soup (牛肉麵). It was good with plenty of beef together with diakon radish. The soup was just nice - very pleasant. The only problem I had was that they did not use the normal yellow mee. Instead they have the fat mee which really is not suitable for beef.

 

The roti babi (pork bread) was delicious. It was pork with onion stuffed in a baked bun. The pork stuffing was very well done and the bread was oven fresh.

We also ordered a plate of char siew rice (叉烧饭). Nothing much to write about. Quite ordinary.

The beef curry mee was rather oily. But it was delicious. The curry was thick and rich. The portion of beef was generous. Again, the mee was not suitable. The normal yellow mee would had been ideal.

The Hainanese mee was great. It was fried with good portions of pork, fish cake, vegetable and topped with nice big pieces of chu yaw char (猪油渣). The lard in the noodle was very evident and that made it really delicious.

We also had a plate of fried mee sua (面线). It was another plate of worthwhile delicious noodles.

No visit to a Hainanese coffee shop would be complete without the kaya toast. It was old coffee shop bread, served with a small tub of butter and kaya.

 

The place also serves a nice kaya roll. I like the rolls very much. It is soft and fluffy. The kaya complements the roll very well. But it must be eaten fresh. After a couple of days, its goodness diminishes. We normally tar pau it back whenever we go there.

Yut Kee is an heritage of sort. This is a true bred Hainanese coffee shop. There are not many places like this left in the country. While it is still around, it is to be appreciated and enjoyed. I hope it will be around for another 82 years.

Hainanese Taste

Hainanese and Teochew seem to have good affinity. And I speak from experience. On the same road as Teow Chew Meng on Jalan SS2/30 in PJ, just several shops away, there is this makan shop that serves Hainanese fare.

 

I have been to this place many times - mainly for breakfasts. It is a simple restaurant with a very pleasant ambiance. It has a nice contemporary Chinese setting with marble tables and stools, and traditional Chinese wall decorations.  Like its Teochew counterpart, I notice that the restaurant attracts the more mature customers.

 

The kitchen at the back is open and you can see your meal being cooked. It is reasonably clean and is staffed by a number of foreign young men.

The restaurant boasts "The Original Mee Pok" on a signboard. Mee pok (面薄) is a flat noodle that is normally eaten dry - kon-lo (干捞). According to a Wikipedia write-up, it is Teochew in origin. It is more popular in Singapore with the bigger Teochew population there. How a Hainanese makan place can boast of original (Teochew) mee pok, beats me. Perhaps it is the part of this affinity that I mentioned.

 

Whatever the origin, I find the mee pok here quite nice. When you order the mee pok, you have the choice whether to have chilli sauce in your noodles. It is quite unusual for kon-lo noodles (干捞面) to be eaten with chilli sauce in Malaysia. It is a more popular practice in Singapore. The noodle is served with minced pork and a generous dose of the tasty, crunchy and sinful chu yaw char. It also comes with a bowl of soup with some fish balls and slices of fish cake in it.

They also serve mee pok in soup, but I prefer the kon-lo preparation.

The fried chee cheong fun (猪肠粉) is rather unique. This is the first place I know that serves fried CCF. And why not? CCF is really very much like koay teow. If koay teow is so popularly fried, why not CCF? The CCF here is fried like char koay teow with taugeh, chives, egg, etc. Looks like char koay teow and tastes like char koay teow.

The yam cake - woo tau kou (芋頭糕) is quite good. It is home made. It is soft and has the full flavour of yam.

 

The restaurant serves a variety of fried fish stuffs. They have fish cakes (鱼饼), fish stuffed fu chuk (腐竹) , fish stuffed sui kow (水饺), fish stuffed spring roll (春卷), etc. You can order them individually or a combo plate of the mixed fish stuffs. They are quite good. I enjoy them.

They also have meat dumpling - kao ji (餃子) in Cantonese or gyoza in Japanese - served with the usual ginger strips in black vinegar. I am no big fan of this meat dumpling. I guess the ones they serve here are OK.

 

A variety of Chinese desserts or tong sui (糖水) such as red bean, barley fu chuk, tau fu fah, black pulut, etc, are available here. A list of the local favorites is on a big signboard. Below the signboard is the slogan in Chinese that translates to read - "We don't want to be the biggest, but the best".

  

The various food they serve here are highly doubtful to be Hainanese in origin. Even the tea which they call and claim as Hainanese tea is doubtful because I have seen it in some mamak shops. But the tea is very good. I always go for it when I am there. It comes in a glass, with a clear demarcation between the tea and the milk, and a foam on top. It is kinda like Irish coffee - you are not sure if you should stir to mix it up.

Hainanese or not, I find the food in Hainanese Taste good and worth going back again and again.