Ipoh is a city which is famous with its old town, food, and limestone caves. About nice food, plenty of them. We stayed at Ipoh for two days, and it's better for us to share about Ipoh's food chronologically. We started with the supper at "Tong Sui Kai", or the dessert street. Located at Sultan Ekram Road, opposite of Sam Tet Chinese School. The street is around 1.5 km away from Ipoh Railway Station, but it is just 200 m away from the hotel we stayed, Excelsior Hotel.
We tried several types of desserts, such as the shaved ice with fruits, wheat and barley porridge, wantan noodle, Ipoh char kuey teaw, and noodle soup with pork and offal.
A scene at the dessert street. This photo was taken at 10:15 pm, with a large crowd of Ipoh's food lovers gathering at the street. According to Livien (our volunteer tour guide :p), the street is one of the favorable supper site at Ipoh. Most of the stalls there are owned by Chinese. The stalls operate until midnight.
Kelly (LS's sister) with a bowl of shaved ice with mix fruits (upper left) on our way back to our hotel. The shaved ice can be served with many combination of fruits. Ice kacang (upper right) and wheat and barley porridge (lower left) are nice as well, but we like the shaved ice with mix fruits the most.
Chee cheong fun (rice noodle roll), some pronounce as Chu cheong fun at Ipoh has different appearance and taste from other places in Malaysia (upper left). Bee hoon with pork and offal (upper right), char kuey teow (lower left), and wantan noodle were the food that we took at the dessert street.
One of the grandmaster chef of "hum dan" (fried flattened noodle with egg and cockle).
Saturday morning, we woke up early to go for Ipoh dim sum. The shop, Ming Court Hong Kong Dim Sum, located at Leong Sin Nam Road, is just 30 m away from our hotel. 7:30 am, there were not many customers in the shop yet, so there was no problem for us to secure a table. Anyway, more and more customers were coming as the time passed. By the time we left at 8:30 am, it was a full house, with no empty table. Many customers had to wait to be seated. Our advice, if you wish to have a relax environment while you are enjoying your nice dim sum, please be early.
Many types of dim sum are available. For this dim sum shop, we just need to settle down and we will be served. On the other hand, Foh San dim sum shop requires self service.
We reached early around 7:30 am. There were many empty table for us.
This photo was taken at 8:30 am, when we were about to leave Ming Court. The shop was full with customers, with many of them standing, awaiting for empty seats.
Wishing for a enjoyable breakfast and a sense of leisure morning? Then you need to be early. You won't feel good if there is someone standing beside you, awaiting to take your seat, while you are flipping for the headlines after your meal, will you?
On our way to old town area, Livien and Bryant suggested that we make a snack stop at yong tau foo (or yong to fu) shop. The shop, Jia Bing is located at Kampung Paluh area (1.5 km away from the old town area). Although our stomach were really full, still we accepted the suggestion.
Picking the food with a full stomach required more effort than doing the same thing with an empty stomach.
Various Ipoh yong tau foo.
Ipoh yong tau foo can be served in soup (left) or to be fried (right). The price, in average, was RM 0.70 per item.
Original Ipoh old town white coffee comes from Sin Yoon Loong at Bandar Timah Road (formerly Leech Street). The shop was established in 1937. For the past 70 years, it served Ipoh with its famous white coffee. Today, it remains as an old coffee house, serving nostalgic white coffee, brewed from freshly roasted coffee bean.
Can you imagine how good is the coffee here? The customers keep on coming, even though it was almost 5 pm.
After being standing and waiting for 10 minutes, we found a place to sit. The taste of the original Ipoh white coffee didn't let us down. Not sort of legendary taste, but, with RM1.30 per cup, it definitely beats Starbucks coffee in many ways.
Ipoh bean sprout chicken. Somebody told us that, if we ever missed Ipoh bean sprout chicken in our trip, then we couldn't be considered had ever visited Ipoh. That was serious. So, to conclude our Ipoh trip, we visited Onn Kee Restaurant, one of the best bean sprout chicken shop in the town. Onn Kee Restaurant is located at Yao Tet Sin Road (in Google Map is Yao Tet Shin). Another famous Ipoh bean sprout chicken shop, Lou Wong is just beside Onn Kee. Again, we would like to mention that it is just a few hundred meters away from our hotel.
Onn Kee Restaurant is located side by side with Lou Wong. Both restaurants. No matter they are friends or enemies, both of them serve delicious bean sprout chicken (we tried Lou Wong before, on our previous trip to Ipoh).
Mouth watering kampung chicken (upper left) served with Ipoh home grown bean sprouts (upper right). According to the locals, the bean sprouts are grown using natural mineral water from the limestone hills in the vicinity of Ipoh. So, the taste is better than the ordinary tap water grown bean sprouts. The portion served was more substantial compared to Hainan chicken rice at Melaka. One whole kampung chicken was enough for 7 persons. The price, together with all other dishes (lower right) was about RM10 per person. Instead of chicken rice, we can choose to have Ipoh hor fun together with the bean sprout chicken.
Lunch with Bryant, Livien, Livien's parents, and Kelly (cameraman).
Lastly, tau foo fah at Ipoh. Tau foo fah (or to fu fah, or to fu fa) is a traditional Chinese food made by soy bean serves in sweetened syrup. We tried Ipoh tau foo fah at two different shops, one is Funny Mountain at Theatre Road, which is a block away from Lou Wong and Onn Kee, another is Woong Kee at Dato Onn Jaafar Road.
The nice food in Ipoh are quite scattered. However, we are lucky as we stayed in Excelsior Hotel. Tong Sui Kai, bean sprout chicken, Ipoh dim sum, and some tau foo fah shops are within walking distance from our hotel. So, if you wish to try some nice Ipoh's food, you can consider to stay in Excelsior Hotel, or somewhere nearby.
To all our readers, if you have some recommendation about nice food in Ipoh, please share it in your comment. A big thank you to all of you.
Now, let us go to visit some Limestone Caves in Ipoh.
