PasanKia

Went to Penang during the Christmas break for a short stay. Penang is a street food heaven, you can find almost every Malaysian nice hawker food in this island. I wish I have a better digestive system to allow me to eat all the nice food here. :(



Went to Air Itam Market area for famous Penang Assam Laska, located along the street in front of Kek Lok Si Temple; Some people call this stall as Kek Lok Si Laksa; Some called it as drain side laksa (because the stall is set a side of a drain). This laksa stall had been mentioned among a lot of foodster, and believe they are one of the best assam laksa in Penang.

I arrive at late afternoon, still the stall was crowded with people ordering laksa. Notice the laksa mee in the huge pot? Not sure how many pots are they selling in a day, but they work at very fast speed in preparing the laksa and you can see the laksa mee is finishing fast.



Look at the assam laksa, it's full of ingredients, including lots of fish flake, red chilies, ginger buds, onions, cucumbers, lettuce, prawn paste and etc. The mixture of these ingredients give very complicated taste, the assam is sour and the prawn paste is sweet, chillies is spicy, it's full of flavor and it's hot!



There are many other hawkers stall across the road,I've order the Char Kuey Teow. I was not impress with the Char Keuy Teow here as I expect more tasteful here. The Char Kuey Toew looks nice though, with big prawns (bigger than the usual in Klang Valley), bean sprouts, Chinese sausage, spring onion and right amount of dark sauce to make the right color. Even though, I believe a lot of Penang Char Kuey Teow is better than this.



I also order curry laksa at the same area. Curry laksa is mee in coconut-based curry soup. Again, Penang curry laksa is slightly different than the normal laksa in Klang Valley. The soup is more watery, serve with pork blood pudding cubes, tofu puffs, bean sprouts, cockles and serve with a spoonful of sambal chillies sauce. Mix all the chillies sauce to get the nice looking red color soup.

Shanghainese La Mian Xiao Long restaurant have mushroomed in this 2 years. Interesting, it seem to be a new formula in Malaysia food and beverage industry. At least I can recall quite a number of La Mian and Xiao Long Bao restaurant that open this 2 years:

1. Crystal Jade at Lot 10
2. Dragon-i (Mid Valley, 1-Utama, Centerpoint, Sunway Pyramid, The Curve, Leisure Mall, Pavilion KL)
3. Chui Heng at Jalan Imbi
4. Lim Meng Kee at Imbi
5. Tu Long at Mid Valley City
   
   

Tu Long is a new restaurant open a week ago, located at the Boulevard office, right opposite of Starbucks Coffee. The restaurant decorated with traditional Chinese theme, ie red and black. With open kitchen concept, it make the restaurant look elegant. It could be due to the restaurant still new, the restaurant serve all customers at first floor and leaving ground floor unoccupied, even though the kitchen and furnitures at ground floor is ready. Not all the menu items is available.

See, all these restaurant are offering similar food beverage menu, and most decoration are similar i.e, open kitchen concept and using dark color furniture! It's not hard to related them to have a same formula and replicating each other.

Funny enough, I always order similar food when visit to these restaurant. This are what I ordered in Tu Long:


I notice they have lobster and crabs meat xiao long bao in the menu, however these 2 items are not available at the moment. The dumpling here are just ok, no surprise.


This Golden scallion Yin Yang seafood dumpling is a mixture of pork meat with fish, and garnish with spring onion (green color) and carrot (orange color). A good mix in color and filling!




The pork dish is actually stir-fried pock slices with vegetables and a so call special chilies oil. The dish taste odd, it smell like smelly bean curd (臭豆腐). If you like smelly bean curd, you probably will like it but not for me.

Overall, I don't like Tu Long, even the hot tea taste like make from low quality tea leaf. If compare with Crystal Jade for the same item, Crystal Jade stand a better marks, therefore I probably will not return.

Tu-Long Xao Long Bao
25-G, 25-1, 27-1
Mid Valley City
Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-2283 3115


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