Restoran Ayam Tauke

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.

Ginger and chilli sauce.

People rave about the ginger and chilli sauce a lot. For me, it spoils the flavour of the chicken.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No Name Seafood Restaurant

Remember the name, or lack thereof.

Interesting name for a restaurant, eh? Do not be fooled by the unassuming name. No Name is a name you ought to remember.

No Name is the kind of restaurant you would not stumble upon, unless you got lost in one of the housing areas deep in the heart of Pengkalan where it happens to be in. Dad found out about the restaurant from a friend, who happens to be the father of the restaurant owner.

If I am not mistaken, the first time I had dinner at No Name was back in 2007. Back then it was a single shop, with few customers and a friendly lady boss standing at the counter near the entrance of the shop greeting customers with a sincere smile; today, the shop is twice the size and so is the crowd, but the lady boss is still there with her signature smile. Some things have changed but the excellent quality of the food stays.

The older half of No Name.

That should be enough background information.

We usually dine at No Name with family friends. Today, however, there are only four people dining, hence the limited number of dishes I can review.

Fried Choi-tam (Brussels sprouts)

First up is the fried choi-tam. I have tasted better but this one is above average I would say. Nothing much to say here.

Deep-fried egg tofu with minced pork.

A common dish found in most, if not all Chinese restaurants, deep-fried egg tofu with minced pork. Many restaurants can achieve a delicate balance between crispy tofu skin and a soft interior. However, No Name takes it up a notch with the secret sauce which makes this dish put those of other restaurants to shame. The minced meat is also just right. Moist and juicy from being soaked in a light amount of the savoury sauce, the minced meat makes a perfect complement for the less salty tofu. This dish is definitely a must-eat.

Steamed pomfret.

I would not call No Name's steamed fish the best, but it is definitely one of the better. Usually, steamed fish is drenched in sauce that can match the saltiness of brine. No Name's fish sauce is a bit light on the palette, but nowhere near bland. However, for today, which is out of the ordinary, the fish lacked freshness.

The flagship dish: fried crabs with salted egg yolk.

Last but not least, No Name's signature fried crabs with salted egg yolk. Words cannot describe accurately how good this dish tastes. For years, No Name has been the benchmark for this dish and it still is so. It is hard if not impossible to delineate the wonderful burst of flavours as the tongue comes into contact with a full pinch of solid, fresh crab meat dipped into the buttery yet chunky salted egg yolk sauce. This dish is by far the most superior among that of all restaurants I have ever ordered this dish at. It is, for a lack of a better word, epic. It is most definitely the best thus far. Enough said.

The next best thing, or the best thing if you are a cheapskate, is the price. The meal cost us RM125.50 including rice and drinks. We paid RM38 for two crabs, RM66.50 for a huge pomfret, RM8 for the tofu and RM6 for the choi-tam.

The downside of having a dinner at No Name is definitely the fact that the restaurant is so hard to find. Had No Name been in a less secluded location, the business would be better by leaps and bounds. On the flip side, there might be a compromise in quality if there is a crowd. I guess you cannot have the best of both worlds.

Restoran Makanan Laut No Name

No. 20, Jalan Pengkalan Indah 5,

Bandar Pengkalan Indah,

31650 Ipoh,

Perak.

Tel: 017-5088523/012-5673115