Ipoh is famous for food. Just mentioning the name of the city is sufficient to start a long conversation about good food. As a (shameless self-proclaimed) food critic who had lived in Ipoh for eight years, I think Ipoh food is very much overrated. No doubt, Ipoh has established a name for itself, judging by the number of restaurants and coffee shops located in this old city, but when it comes to the delicacies that really stand out, Ipoh is pretty much hopeless. However, the secret art of preparing tauge (bean sprout) chicken is still tucked safely in the sleepy city. Many restaurants outside Ipoh have tried replicating tauge chicken and have failed miserably. This is the last bastion in defending Ipoh's reputation as one of the food capitals of Malaysia.
The most famous tauge chicken joints are in the middle of Ipoh city. Quite frankly, those places are for tourists who are not familiar with the Ipoh eating scene. If you demand high standards for food, what those places serve would be close to inedible. Their hor fun (rice noodles) have a strong stench of whatever unknown chemical(s) applied to them; the sauces they use for their chicken, chicken innards, bean sprouts and noodles are saltier than the dead sea.
Fortunately, I still know of one place where hope still shines bright for tauge chicken - some hidden shop in Buntong called Restoran Ayam Tauke. Yes, I did not misspell "tauge", the shop owner or signboard maker did, which might be deliberate for all I know. For a shop that resembles a house more, deep in the middle of nowhere, it has a healthy crowd every night, except on Tuesdays when it is closed.
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| Ginger and chilli sauce. |
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| Tauge (bean sprout). |
Short and plump, that is how tauge from Ipoh look like, which according to urban legend is due to the hard water. Somehow, the tauge are also crunchier and juicier compared to those from other places.
The tauge is not what separates this restaurant from the rest. Instead, the magic is in the sauce. The sauce is just perfectly balanced, is not too salty that the natural flavour of the tauge, chicken, innards is masked. I have also never experienced strong thirsts after consuming the food, which means they do not bombard the sauce with MSG.
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| Chicken liver and kidney. |
Disgusting? Not to me. Tasty? Hell yeah. I just love chicken innards. For one, they taste good without any seasoning, as compared to meat which is just bland if unseasoned. Secondly, the texture of chicken liver just appeals to me. It is creamy but a bit grainy and powdery, giving something to chew on, yet crumbles so easily into paste upon chewing. Chicken kidney I am not such a fan of, but they are still fun to chew due to the rubbery texture.
I believe that the same sauce is used for the tauge and the chicken so I will not repeat myself.
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| Hor fun in soup. |
Apparently, the hard water also enables the manufacturing of silky smooth hor fun. By silky smooth I mean all you have to do is suck lightly at the beginning of a strand and the whole strand just slides in with a loud slurp. I still find that fascinating.
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| Dry hor fun. |
I do not fancy hor fun in soup as much as my parents do. My favourite is still the dry hor fun with dark sauce. The sauce is a very important aspect of this dish. Under-seasoned, the smell of rice from the hor fun pierces through; over-seasoned, all you taste is sauce, even when accompanied by tauge or chicken. This place mixes their sauce just right, such that the hor fun is good enough on its own, but even better with tauge and chicken.
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| Tauge chicken. |
Last but not least, tauge chicken. Boiled chicken drenched with the aforementioned sauce. According to my dad, the chicken they use is called 鬍鬚雞 or 胡须鸡 (moustache chicken, literally). The chicken is special, to say the least. The meat is just tender and silky smooth, even the chicken breasts are more than palatable. Put it this way, I would actually eat the breast meat without a gun to my forehead.
If the meat is amazing, describing the skin would be beyond my vocabulary and imagination. I might be biased here because I go nuts over chicken skin. The tauge chicken has jelly-like skin which is as smooth as the hor fun if not for the follicles. For the health freaks, the skin does not have a thick layer of fat underneath it, which makes it healthier than regular chickens. Healthier and tastier, the chicken is a dream come true for skin lovers.
For those who have lost faith in Ipoh's tauge chicken, or have never tried tauge chicken but have heard about it all too much by word of mouth, Restoran Ayam Tauke is the place to go as far as I know.
849, Jalan Guntong,
Buntong, 30100 Ipoh,
Perak.
05-255 7469 or 017-5787251.
Tough luck finding it on Google Maps.
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