[Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia] Ipoh street food options from Ipoh Ipoh Cafe, SS2 Petaling Jaya

klyeoh · November 19, 2024, 3:24pm

Ipoh Ipoh Cafe in KL offers some of the most authentic renditions of street food options from the city of Ipoh, one of Malaysia’s foremost culinary destinations.

Kuala Lumpur (a federal territory of the Federation of Malaysia, and the country’s capital city) and Ipoh (the state capital of Perak state) are the two cities with the largest Cantonese-Chinese populations in Malaysia. Although they are merely 207 km (128 miles) apart - a leisurely 2.5 hours’ drive - Cantonese cuisine in both cities bore slight regional differences. Even their Cantonese dialects have slight variances, although they are 100% mutually intelligible.

Some differences in culinary terms between KL and Ipoh:

I love Ipoh food, but haven’t been there in over two years. For Penangites, Ipoh’s location at the halfway point between Penang and Kuala Lumpur meant that it’s often bypassed as we drive to KL.

Anyway, I was in Kuala Lumpur last week for the MICHELIN Guide KL & Penang 2025 awards, and an Ipoh friend residing in KL said she’ll show me a place for the most authentic renditions of food from her hometown, which was how we ended up at Ipoh Ipoh Cafe on Saturday morning.

What we tried:

Kai see hor fun - this is a must-have: flat rice noodles immersed in a savory blend of intensely-flavored chicken broth and prawn stock, garnished with strips of poached chicken-meat, de-shelled prawns, and chives.

One finds very good renditions of this dish in well-established spots all over Ipoh, many with their own legion of fans: Moon de Moon, Thean Chun, Loke Wooi Kee, Kong Heng, etc.

The owner of Ipoh Ipoh Cafe is supposedly a distant relation to the family who owns Kong Heng. It got me quite excited as Kong Heng was the place where I had my very first taste of kai see hor fun back in 1974, half a century ago! The rendition here was tasty, but not as intensely flavored as I know the dish can be.

Ipoh chee cheong fun - these are delicate, steamed rice rolls. Kuala Lumpur’s version would have a savory brown sauce based on fermented brown soy beans, whereas the Ipoh version uses fermented red bean paste, also commonly called 𝘩𝘰𝘪 𝘴𝘪𝘯 sauce. Pickled green chilis are also added, besides crisp-fried shallots and toasted sesame seeds.

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Curry chee cheong fun - another very good rendition here, where the chee cheong fun noodles were drenched in a liquid curry sauce, enriched with coconut milk. Deep-fried beancurd sheets (“foo chuk”) and strips of spongey, deep-fried-then-blanched pig’s skin provided an added textural dimension.

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Wantan noodles - very similar to KL-style wantan noodles. Quite an average-tasting rendition here. I was quite surprised to see crisp-fried wantans being used for garnishing here - that used to be a “Penang thang” but seems to have caught on all over Malaysia nowadays.
Braised shitake mushrooms are added for that extra umami hit. Use of braised mushroom sauce on noodles seems more common in Ipoh than elsewhere in Malaysia.

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A good place that I’d like to return to, in order to taste the other stuff on their menu.

Address
Ipoh Ipoh Cafe
26, Jalan SS 2/10, SS 2, 47300 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
Tel: +6017-873 6733
Opening hours: 9am to 2.45pm, 5.30pm to 8.45pm Tue to Sun. Closed on Mondays.

PedroPero · November 19, 2024, 5:27pm

Salivating!

Saregama · November 19, 2024, 6:53pm

I’ve been wanting to order this from a local Malaysian place. YOUR PIC pushes me over – love the curry and the cheong fun noodles!

klyeoh · November 20, 2024, 1:58am

Did you ever ask where in Malaysia they are from? It may give you an indication what dishes they do well. For example, the difference between Perak food and Penang food can be as stark as comparing, say, Punjabi and Tamil food!

Speaking of which - my most recent article:

Saregama · November 20, 2024, 4:03am

No, but I will now! I don’t know if you can tell by looking at the menus (like I would be able to for Punjabi vs Tamil) – see here and here for two places in Flushing. This place apparently under-spiced their food for some nyc onions. This is another spot…

klyeoh · November 20, 2024, 5:59am

No, in general, Malaysian restaurateurs in the US just come up with a menu featuring all the “standard” dishes that work on Americans. But once you get to know them - you can ask that they prepare dishes from their home states for you.

Sometimes, you do come across a tiny clue by chance, e.g. when the nasi lemak at Malaysia Hall Canteen in London back in 2018 had fenugreek seeds. Even though nasi lemak is the de facto national dish of Malaysia, only the Malays from the states of Kelantan and Terengganu will add fenugreek seeds when cooking their coconut milk-enriched rice. And the Kelantanese are loath to do that if the rice used was all-white, as they’d only do it to unpolished/brown rice. Imagine the surprise of the Malaysia Hall Canteen chef when I asked her if she’s from Terengganu. She was, and expressed her shock that someone could’ve guessed her origins.

medgirl · November 20, 2024, 10:35am

You’re like a culinary Sherlock Holmes !

klyeoh · November 20, 2024, 1:28pm

Or just being plain finicky.

medgirl · November 20, 2024, 4:17pm

Seriously, your knowledge of cuisine is encyclopaedic!

medgirl · November 21, 2024, 11:44am

Just landed in KL. Nasi lemak was offered as a breakfast option (Malaysia Airlines). Lo and behold - it was white rice with fenugreek seeds! This is the first time I have come across this. What a coincidence that I had read about this just the day before thanks to @klyeoh.

klyeoh · November 21, 2024, 1:46pm

Wow!

klyeoh · January 23, 2025, 3:01pm

Back to Ipoh Ipoh last Sunday - didn’t realise that place is so busy on weekends: absolute pandemonium with people queuing outside for a table.

The owner, Eric Lee, Ipoh-born, and whose auntie opened one of the earliest kai see hor fun noodle stalls in Ipoh at the legendary Kong Heng coffeeshop, was around.

A very good rendition of kai see hor fun - Ipoh’s most famous noodle dish, is offered here.

Kai see hor fun - the classic Ipoh dish: thin, flat rice noodles in an intensely-flavored prawn-pork-chicken broth, garnished with poached chicken-meat, de-shelled prawns, chives, chopped scallions and golden-fried shallots.

Wantan noodles - the Ipoh rendition does not differ much from its KL counterpart. Same garnishes of very good char siew (Cantonese-style BBQ pork), shredded chicken meat, braised shitake mushroom, crisp-fried wantans, choy sum greens, and a small bowl of soup with 3 poached wantan dumplings. Tasted much better, with owner-chef Eric Lee back, than when we came during his absence two months ago.

Ipoh-style curry mee - a very good rendition: a mix of yellow Hokkien wheat noodles & rice vermicelli, with a coconut milk-enriched broth with well-balanced spicing, garnished with good char siew, long beans, foo choke (soy bean sheets) and a sprig of fresh mint leaves.

Additional order of crisp-fried “foo choke” sheets

Special steamed chicken with yellow wine dressing - very tasty and a must-order if one comes here.

Ipoh-style 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘶𝘯, “𝘸𝘦𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘶” - came with 3 types of sauces: sweet fermented red bean sauce, spicy chili sauce, and an umami-loaded mushroom sauce.

Chee cheong fun - this is the standard version, dressed in only fermented red bean sauce, and topped with toasted sesame seeds and crisp-fried shallots.