KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 13 — Ask anyone familiar with OUG or Kuchai Lama for food recommendations and Kum Kee is bound to pop up.
The iconic charcoal roast pork spot will turn 40 next year, but it’s far from the only place selling siu mei (Cantonese roast meats) in the area – there’s even another spot just across the street.
Sporting a deep green sign, Xin Lian Hin Restaurant faces the park that separates the two rows of shops.
As the shiny new sign and air-conditioned setting suggest, the shop is new, having just opened in March this year.
However, they’ve been in the area for decades – maybe not as long as Kum Kee – and previously operated out of Restoran New Lian Hin, a few doors down from Kum Kee.
That space is now called Restoran TST (天上天), though it’s still listed by the old name on Google. No prizes for guessing what ‘Xin’ (新 = new) refers to – it’s the new new Lian Hin, folks!
It wasn’t particularly busy for a Sunday morning, though most of the crowd seemed to be regulars and families from the neighbourhood.
Some older folks came in, sat down, and casually whipped out their reading glasses to begin their morning video binge (phone volume on full blast) while waiting for their super-specific regular order to materialise – all without ever having to place them.
Our orders were fairly simple – a small portion of curry mee (RM10.50), which comes with poached chicken, pork rind, cockles, long beans, taugeh and your choice of noodles.
For RM5, you may add on chicken, char siu, siu yuk or cockles. My mother went with char siu, while I opted for siu yuk; I find its salty, fatty properties a far better match for the richness of curry than the sweetness of caramelised char siu.
Coffee nuts will swear up and down to you that there’s nothing like the first sip of coffee in the morning. They’re wrong.
No sensation comes close to the first sip of thick, santan-enriched curry, especially when it’s the first drop of liquid entering your body that morning because you woke up in a hazy, likely dehydrated state.
Don’t be like me – drink water in the morning, people. Rich and warming, this bright orange liquid marbled with specks of red oil is an elixir of aromatics, spice, and comfort for a parched soul like me.
In other words, syiok!
The best part about a great bowl of curry mee like this one is that the pleasure and enjoyment you derive from it only deepens as you work your way through it.
Mix in the “sambal” on the side for a more savoury kick, courtesy of the ample dried shrimp (har mai) in the paste.
Bite into sponge-like tofu pok or pork rind for some squirt-in-your-mouth action. Best of all, the siu yuk here had all the ideal characteristics for dunking in curry.
A crisp, thin top layer of crackling led to fatty, soft white meat in the middle, rounded off with an intensely salty base that didn’t hold back on the five-spice.
The crackling retained most of its crunch even after repeated dunking, instead of falling apart like Oreos in milk.
If you want to eat siu yuk with your curry mee, you’ll often have to DIY it by getting it from another stall in the same coffee shop or tapau-ing it from a nearby market.
Even curry mee spots that offer siu yuk tend to excel in the former rather than the latter, making for a less-than-perfect experience. Xin Lian Hin comes pretty close to perfection.
Xin Lian Hin Restaurant
70, Jalan Rukun 4, Taman Continental, 58200 Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur
Open daily, 7.30am-4pm. Closed every other Thursday.
Tel: 019-663 7854
Facebook: @XinLianHinRestaurant
* This is an independent review where the writer paid for the meal.
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