Coffee Shop Wars Ara Damasara, PJ: New Beginnings

 

In the Beginning….

In the beginning, before there was Covid19 and the Lockdown, there was Tien Tien Lai, a coffeeshop stalwart of the breezy, Ara Damansara neighbourhood. Tien Tien Lai was a no-frills corner coffee shop in a block of light industry and motor workshops.

Sarawak Laksa Shootout: Lin Li Xiang and Aunty Lan

 By Lee Yu Kit, April 2021

Being keen on Sarawak laksa, I recently tried out an acquaintance’s recommendation. Lin Li Xiang had been open for about a year when I visited, not the best timing as much of 2020 was the MCO period with restricted dine in. 

Lin Li Xiang shoplot 

Located along a nondescript line of shoplots in Damansara Jaya, Lin Li Xiang is a Sarawak-food theme’d restaurant, a couple of notches above your typical noisy coffee shop. Within, it’s neat and spacious with a tiled floor and semi-tiled walls complementing the wooden furniture, which lends it a touch of class. Posters of Sarawak specialties adorn the walls, both noodles such as kolo mee, tomato mee and laksa as well as dishes such as curries and pig trotters as accompaniments to rice.  The friendly brother-sister couple who run the restaurant hail from Kuching, Sarawak, which boded well for the food.

Singapore Fried Hokkien Mee Roosts in S17, PJ

 Dec 11, 2020

Local food specialties don’t always make spectacular breakouts. Sure, you can point out Ipoh’s sar hor fun, Sarawak laksa and Penang’s all-conquering hawker food, which have spread far and wide.

Witness, however, KL’s famously artery-clogging black noodle hokkien mee, which has the aura of almost religious fervour among late-night eating out cognoscenti trawling backlanes and under-the-tree tai chou outlets, but only within the Klang valley.  In fact, many Malaysian small towns have their local specialties, which have a cult-like appeal in a very limited locality.

Vegetarian Restaurant Cafe Bookshop in SS2

 

Residents of SS2, PJ will be familiar with Murni Discovery, the value-for-money eatery that sees tables spilling onto sidewalks since 1999. Murni’s latest venture is something else entirely: up the stairs above Murni is M’Laboori, a modern, spacious nook with clean lines, books on wooden shelves, discreet overhead lighting and air-conditioning. It’s a bookshop cum vegetarian restaurant-café.

A Taste of Sichuan in Corporate Singapore

By Lee Yu Kit

Pictures courtesy of Chuan Hung Noodles

Sichuan noodles in the middle of corporate Singapore

The restaurant was barely a week old when I popped by to catch up with Megs, whom I haven’t seen in over a year.  The restaurant was less than a hundred meters from the Teluk Ayer MRT station, located in Singapore’s financial district, with steel and glass towers gleaming in the late afternoon light. 

Inside the restaurant

Tucked into a little corner of another metal-jacketed, tall office complex, was Chuan Hung Noodles.  And there was Megs, looking elegant and cool after a press review and photo shoot of her new restaurant.  The last time we’d met, we were hiking a volcano in Indonesia and were grimy and mud-splattered. 

The restaurant is small within, with barely a half dozen tables, and bar-like seating along the walls, but there’s an airy window and doorway, looking out onto a shaded corridor where you can help yourself to cold or warm water. There’s a small cut-out looking into the kitchen, and the whole set-up throws off warm, cozy vibes amidst the impersonal, corporate surroundings.

Signature Braised Beef Rice Noodles

The restaurant serves Sichuan noodles, sourced from a small village in Sichuan, China, and that includes the cook, noodles and ingredients.  The small menu, with Noodles, Add-Ons and Small Plates, offers a number of options, with either Noodles or Rice Noodles and a choice of Clear, Mixed or Red soups, the latter being of the tongue-tingling, stomach-searing variety that Sichuan cuisine is well known for.

Animal innards and tongue spice up the mix further, but I wisely selected Shredded Chicken with Long Beans (S$11.50), served in a large shallow bowl – narrow-cut rice noodles in a colourful mix of preserved vegetables and shredded chicken.

The white rice noodles had a mild texture, with a spring, slippery yet not slimy, with a middling firmness, and fine enough to slide from the wooden chopsticks. It’s that last two percent which makes noodles memorable or forgettable, and these noodles, which are specially made in a village in Sichuan, were good, with nicely balanced qualities. 

I’d chosen the Mixed soup, with a clear, light-red complexion, not at all oily, with a bit of sting, but not enough to upset the composure overall.  The soup was sweet and clear, in the way that Chinese soups tend to be. A well settled disposition afterwards lent credence to Meg’s claim of not using any MSG. Ingredients enriched the dish, even without the addition of the table condiments of hand-ground Sichuan peppers in oil and shredded salted vegetables, which you can scoop into your noodles for extra oomph.

Sweet Fermented Rice

Desserts are all but unknown in Sichuan cuisine, but the Sweet Fermented Rice (S$3.50) did nicely, a super-smooth gelatinous white gel, with sweet sauce and a few condiments for colour.  What’s interesting is that the cook hand-grinds glutinous rice in a stone pestle and mortar to this smooth paste before further processing.

A bowl of noodles in soup is deceptively simple, yet its very simplicity makes it difficult to master. Chuan Hung Noodles is a modest outlet, worth a visit for its specialization in its niche, of down-to-earth Sichuan noodles, its faithfulness to its roots and its artisanal approach to producing a good bowl of noodles.

King Prawns Noodles Vine Pepper

Chuan Hung Noodles,

51 Telok Ayer Street #01-01 S048441, Singapore

hello@chuanhung.com.sg

Business hours: 11am-8pm daily.