Kulim Food Forages

MY first week in Kulim. Never been here – haven’t heard of any good exciting food either. So I did a search on the web and lo! there were a few postings about the local food. Unfortunately I was so busy I just don’t have time to go check out – maybe later especially that famous duck rice at Lunas.

Anyway, here are some of “ok so-so” food I managed to find during spare time. First is breakfast, right, talking about breakfast there is a dearth of choice near the area of my work! If I wanted more choices will have to drive 20 minutes into Kulim town ….!

Curry noodle

OK. My first Kulim curry noodle. It came with a piece of chicken and lots of long beans. Taste? Ok-lor. Price – cheapo. Only RM3.50.

But the curry soup is not as heavy as those found in KL.It seemed they are easy on the coconut juice over here. And from the look you know they don’t use much oil either unlike some in Ipoh and KL where the curry looks so fiery “red” hot.

It’s not superb tasty neither is it bad but the curry (hot-ness) itself is hmmm.. more like the curry noodle you’ll find in our school canteen – it looks like curry it just doesn’t taste like the real one 🙂

But to be fair, the curry paste that accompanied the noodles are not too bad. It has the right flavor of a curry paste minus the saltish taste.

My hunger not so sated I decided to rush out during lunch break determined to beat the traffic to reach Kulim town so that i can have time to recce for something more satisfying. A kind soul told me Kulim town is on the way to Tesco so I whip out my Galaxy Note and key in Tesco to Google Map. 15 minutes later I reach an area with colonial buildings and a few banks and instinctively I know I am there. Make a few turn and confirmed this is the place. There are quite a few kopi tiam around as well as those dilapidated street side stall with badly maintained zinc roof.

Saw a stall with quite a few people eating so decided to check it out.

They are selling ‘wat-tan-hor”. Looks ok, so I ordered one.It is a strange “wat-tan-hor” – I mean compared to what I always have. You can hardly see any “wat-tan” (eggs) and there is no prawns. Only veges and chicken pieces. And they add bee-hoon inside so it is more like KL “yin-yong” (deep fried bee-hoon with kway teow) But the thing is the bee-hoon is not deep fried here.

The preparation is also different. The sauces are pre-prepared in a big soup pot. The uncle will fry the noodles when you order and then someone else will scoop the sauce onto the hor-fun.

It looks strange but the taste is not bad. It just lack “kick”. If  the “hor-fun” are fried on high fire and then splash it with a dash of pork oil then the taste will come out like “olala” and this is the “kick” that is missing here.

Anyway, for RM3.80 I don’t think I can complain much.:-)

Day 2 – now that I know my way around – I am determined to find something that can leave an impression on my taste buds.

And driving around I think I finally found it. Not far from the “wat-tan-hor” place I saw this “wonton noodle” shop.

My initial reaction was – aiyah.. wonton noodle… but being short of time i decided to give it a go. Die, die la. Not that I have not being dissapointed for the last 2 days.

This shop also served other stuffs like chicken legs, “sui-kow” etc but I ordered a normal wonton noodle.

The noodle looks plain enough but surprisingly springy, chewy and tasty. The tasty part must have come from the well mixed dark soy sauce top up with some pork oil and deep fried pork fats. Biting into the noodle give you a kind of satisfying “chewy” feeling and mix with the dark soy sauce with pork oil – it is just heavenly!

On top of that, there is not a hint of alkaline water in the noodle and based on the texture of the noodle I instinctively guess it must be an “egg only” noodle. To confirm my theory I purposely struck up a conversation with the young man running the stall.

Apparently his dad has been selling the same wonton noodle for the past 50 years on a push cart! And they have been making the noodle by hand until today!! And Yes – it is confirmed these are “egg only” noodles and therefore the body of the noodle are chewy soft but not soggy soft and definitely not as “elastic” hard to chew as the normal full alkaline based wonton noodle.

However, the disappointing thing is the wonton is so so so small. It seemed like a trend in most smaller town. They can’t make wonton noodle any bigger than 20 cents coin. Strange.

Anyhow, with my hunger fully placated- I shall take a break here and will most probably continue to share my food forages in the days to come.