Yes, early dinner’s fine, maybe even more pleasant as the temperature’s would’ve cooled down quite a bit. KL’s heat & humidity can be enervating.
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Am back from my trip.
Bad weather conditions. It poured everyday throughout the whole trip, we only managed to reach our hotel slightly before 5pm for our first day with the traffic jams and rain showers.
Only managed to visit 5 stalls out of the above list. We didn’t know we had free breakfast at the hotel - concierge informed us that upon checking in. The mister felt miserable, waking up everyday with the rain pouring - we ended up eating hotel breakfast everyday.
Day 1. Since we only managed to reach close to 5pm, we went to Hutong @ Lot 10. Was thinking of trying the wantan mee suggested by @klyeoh.
Alas, the staff said the wantans were sold out. The mister ordered the noodles with roasts and a duck egg penang char kway tiao (CKT).
The roast noodles were very good, much to the mister’s preference. I found the texture slightly harder than usual though it was extremely thin (that’s good), the dark sauce was a little overwhelming to me. Char siu fared better than siu yok, with half fatty and half meaty. But the meaty portion was slightly harder which meant more chewing.
We liked the CKT - generous amounts of lard, duck egg, lap cheong, cockles and chives. For that amount we paid in a food court, this wins hands down from the many CKT in foodcourts.
Day 2.
Breakfast at the hotel and the mister went back to bed again since it was raining again.
We went to Ho Kow Hainam Kopitiam around noon. Waited close to 50 min. Good thing they have a machine issuing tickets. Get a ticket and wait for the number to be called.
We ordered 4 dishes and 2 Chams. Think similar to HK yuan yang, or same - coffee mixed with tea? Service was great, the young staff were all polite and the boss was walking around saying hi to customers.
The mister liked his fried chicken nasi lemak - it came with a har cheong gai drumstick. Food wise slightly above, I like the crunchy peanut with kaya butter soft bun. Won’t mind heading back.
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Day 2 (cont’d).
After the meal, we walked around Chinatown. Came across a newly opened Hawker Chan’s nearby Ho Kow - full house during lunch hour. But the rain got heavier and no Grab car was available for the next hour - were stuck at Starbucks in Kotaraya Complex. No choice but to walk all the way to Pasar Seni (thankfully we had hotel umbrellas).
Went to NU Sentral and walked around. Waited until past 6pm and slowly made our way to Sin Kee. Despite the heavy rain showers, the restaurant was 3/4 filled and more came.
Likewise 4 dishes for dinner, dessert was mine and the beer was the mister’s. In fact, we couldn’t finish most of the dishes. Portions were way too big for two of us.
The mun fan (steamed seafood rice) and the Hainanese pork chop were the signatures. Also ordered two dishes with fermented beancurd - yau mak (the mister didn’t like this, so I ate most of it) and the pork ribs which the mister finished.
Among the four, we liked the pork chop most. Totally different from what one would find in Singapore. SG style would be a fried pork cutlet with the ketchup sauce and mixed beans. In Sin Kee, it’s a pan-fried ground pork patty and topped with the sauce. Same concept as a hamburg steak in Japan. Thick and moist pork chop. Yums!
Lots of prawns and squids found in the mun fan, but I think the portion would have been more in the past based on bloggers’ pictures.
The pork ribs had no smell of fermented beancurd since they were probably deep fried.
Day 3.
Rainy day again. Breakfast as usual at the hotel. Made our way down to Nasi Lemak Wanjo Kampung slightly before 11.30am.
We were lucky to come before lunch hours. Big families and office workers came not too long after. Ordered the same for two of us. Begedil (fried mashed potato with spices and herbs), telur goreng (fried egg) and ayam goreng (fried chicken). Plus two teas.
Very spacious and most of the staff are young. There are a few cats roaming around the eatery and little kids either welcomed them with their food or screamed and cried (they probably freaked out with the cat’s tail touching their feet).
The tea - we were shocked to see the amount of condensed milk inside our cups. Way too sweet. Didn’t dare to stir the whole cup as it was.
For the first time, we were very impressed with this nasi lemak. They actually use good rice unlike many stalls in SG, they use rice grains that were very brittle (my mum calls it 碎米). The chili sauce is not too spicy, we would call it sweet and spicy instead. The fried chicken was probably marinated with lots of ginger and cooked in the same way as ayam penyet (from some places that we have ate before). Begedil over here was way bigger portion than what we could find in SG as well. Worth the traveling!
We would probably be back to try other dishes, and skip the drinks.
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Oh dear, what a bummer. KL’s quite a nightmare when it rains. I’m glad you braved it out to get to Hutong, though.
I must confess that I’d never gone back to Ho Kow ever since it “upgraded” itself to its current location - the crowds were too overwhelming. The poached eggs on toast you had looked interesting - they spooned curry sauce over it?
My fave dish at Sin Kee as well - nowhere else in Malaysia does it this way - with minced pork patty - as they do.
Yes, it’s soft boiled eggs over toasts with curry sauce. Was telling the mister it is like eating roti banjir with toasts replacing the prata. We initially wanted the one without the sauce but ordered wrongly with the curry instead.
As for the waiting time, it seems shorter waiting time for smaller groups of 1-2 pax.
And we really didn’t expect KL to rain everyday. So glad that Grab was available everywhere, minus the time when we were stuck in Chinatown for more than an hour with no cars due to heavy rain showers.
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Day 3 (cont’d).
Well it was raining again when we left Wanjo Kampung. Hung out at Pavilion for tea before dinner.
Claypot rice at Heun Kee.
We reached before 7.30pm. There was already a queue waiting for a table just right outside the restaurant. A young Chinese staff took orders from those in the queue. As I did not want to waste food, we ended up ordering lesser items this time. So a small claypot rice with chicken thighs (just do a top-up to one’s desired ingredients), soup of the day which happened to be watercress soup and HK kailan in oyster sauce.
We felt this was way better than what we had eaten in HK. This was cooked with charcoal from the start - water, rice grains and then the ingredients. The rice was fluffy, not so much of the soccarat. Surprisingly the salted fish which we added and mixed with the rice wasn’t that salty too. It was nonetheless a wonderful dish we had eaten.
I would have ordered a pig stomach soup if I knew they served this (saw the pictures on the walls), we only saw soup of the day on the menu given to us. The watercress soup wasn’t bad too, boiled with chicken feet and a small chicken breast and red dates, the soup was already so sweet on its own.
Overall, Heun Kee rated top in the mister’s list. The lady boss and even the foreign cooks were quite friendly. The cooks even bade us goodbyes when we left and told us to come visit them again.
Day 4.
I managed to get the mister to wake up earlier to eat bak kut teh (BKT). Just 5 min walk from our hotel, he decided to try Sun Fong instead of Ah Hei. Surprisingly when we arrived before 8am, only one table was taken up, whereas Ah Hei was slightly more crowded.
Broth is sweet, unlike the peppery ones we find in SG. The staff told us that there’ll be small amounts of intestines and stomach pieces in the soup, which we did find a few small slices of the pig stomach. The mister had rice and I ate with the youtiao (fried fritters). Didn’t look like the soup is refillable. And the staff didn’t seem friendly, was asking questions about the portions and she only mentioned everything in the menu is for single portion except the BKT. Maybe it might be better for us to come with a bigger group and try more dishes instead.
Brought the mister to Win Heng Seng after breakfast to try the porkball noodles, but alas, it started to rain when we made our way there, even though it was less than 5 min walk from Sun Fong. Lots of tables outside but we couldn’t eat outside with the rain. So we headed back to the hotel, had another round of breakfast - fried eggs, fruits and hot tea since we were still in time for its breakfast buffet.
The mister was not too happy with the rain again and he decided not to visit Pudu or Chinatown for the listed stalls so we ended up at Pavilion until it was time to board the bus back to Singapore. And it rained all the way back till we reached the customs. 
At least we did have some good meals among all, if not for the rain.
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That’s a first for me - must be Ho Kow’s new invention. We don’t see this anywhere else!
That was a real bummer! You could have tried taking the new subway/MRT (Pasar Seni station) that will take you to downtown Bukit Bintang in a few minutes (2 stops away!)
Ah, we did. Waited till past 5pm and the mister decided not to wait for available Grab drivers anymore. Walked all the way to Pasar Seni in the rain (couple of potholes and puddles to walk over) and took the LRT to Sentral for Sin Kee.
I must say that the old Chinatown neighbourhood is perhaps KL’s dingiest. Just as well that you didn’t waste more time on waiting for Grab - the drivers tend to avoid that part of the city if it rains for fear of being stuck in the horrible traffic jams.
The old LRT network is separate from the newer, spankier MRT network, with its larger, faster trains. Pasar Seni is one of the interchange stations where the two rail networks meet - look out for the MRT the next time you’re there. There is a line that brings you straight to Kajang for its famous satay in just a bit more than half an hour - it used to take an hour to drive there. The Stadium Kajang station (not the Kajang terminal station) actually stops right in front of the legendary Haji Samuri satay complex.
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This was divine! You’re right - the KL version delivers a flavour punch compared to its HK counterpart, just as KL’s Cantonese populace, in general, seemed more brusque and assertive compared to their more urbane counterparts in HK.
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Shall save this place for the next trip, the mister seemed quite happy with those few local places. Thanks for the share!
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I’ve just been watching a travel documentary where the presenter went to Wanjo for nasi lemak.
Rhys William, a British transplant living in KL, has a YouTube feature on Nasi Lemak Wanjo. He’s got a huge following among the Malays here - his videos specialise in Malaysian-Malay cuisine (not Chinese-Malaysian or Indian-Malaysian).
He’s speaking in Malay here on his Nasi Lemak Wanjo episode, but there are English subtitles:
Rhys William when he first arrived in Malaysia back in 2013, and now.
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Testament to the good eating opportunities?
I enjoyed the vid. Well, apart from the lung bit. I’ve eaten lung once, in Spain - it was unpleasantly chewy and I’d not be in a rush to try it again
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Unrecognisable! What’s happened in a few short years? Only from the food?
I can’t find it anymore but it was on BBC site where I read an article about a young Brit in Malaysia who married a local and converted to islam and accidentally became a celeb. His popularity started when he spoke Terengganu dialect to a shopkeeper in KL.
Anyway, check out “my” new dress: 
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I think his mini-celebrity status, which resulted in a quite prolific eating schedule, played a part in that. And Malay cuisine tends to be very rich: lots of coconut milk, lots of sugar, high-carb, a lot of deep-fried food items!
I had the same experience with fried lung at Nasi Lemak Antarabangsa, another top nasi lemak spot in Kuala Lumpur. I just did not like its smell. First and last for me.
Yup, and all within 5-6 years! He just ate and ate his way through Malaysia!
BTW, @Presunto, that Miss Malaysia who wore the nasi lemak dress is currently under a cloud of controversy ever since she made some ridiculous comments with regards to the George Floyd killing and protests:
She’s lambasted by Malaysians who were outraged by her comments.
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A polite way of phrasing things, Peter.
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And rightly so! I don’t understand her mentality. Just because there’s a public platform for voicing one’s opinions that doesn’t mean they should or need to broadcast their morally repugnant utterances.
As for the excess eater, it’s a disaster for his health and it shows. He can make time for exercise and his general physical health whilst still being able to enjoy all the good food and good life. He’s a young chap and chooses to do this to himself.
There’s a German rhyme that goes something like this (roughly translated): “Morning, afternoon, evening. Enjoy your beer but don’t despise it.”
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