Sushi Hiroba @Holborn, London

Hello to my fellow readers! Firstly I have to apologise for not updating my food blog since like ages ago, reason is that my summer holidays ended and I am back in the UK for my final year studies. There’s a few times in which I did take pictures of food but I wasn’t confident about blogging those food because either the pictures weren’t good enough or I lack of information for them.

This time I am going to Sushi Hiroba near my place in Holborn area, and it is my very first time because the price of food there is considered slightly expensive compared to other Japanese restaurants. However, I have always heard of it’s good reputation from my friends so I have decided to give it a try.

As the name suggests, it is a fusion Japanese restaurant which serves different kinds of fusion sushi with a revolving sushi bar in the middle as shown in the picture below.
As there were many patrons, we have waited quite a while for tables and decided to take the sushi bar side instead of waiting even longer for a proper independent table. After taking our seats, we decided just to take whatever sushi which looked nice on the conveyor belt without even taking much of a glance at the menu. However, I still needed to check out the menu specifically for what I was eating so I would be able to blog it here.

Spicy Salmon Roll – £3.50
There were only 2 pieces of  Salmon roll in this, filled with salmon sashimi, avocado, tamago, tobiko on top as well as house mayonnaise and spicy sauce. It was either I was hungry or it was a very tasty salmon roll. Both the salmon sashimi and avocado were very fresh and the addition tobiko always adds that extra taste to any sushi. The sushi rice used was of above average.

Ebi (Prawn) Sushi with Cheese – £3.50
This tasted just average although I love cheese, the prawns used weren’t as fresh I hoped they were and definitely not worthed the price for just 2 pieces.

Unagi (Eel) Sushi – £3.50
Compared to the previous Ebi Sushi, this Unagi Sushi was so much better considering the price was the same. The unagi was sweet, having a soft texture to it and besides that, this unagi doesn’t have a bad smell like some places do.

Soft Shell Crab Roll – £3.00
As some of you might know, soft shell crab is one of my favourite dishes. This is a combination of crispy soft shell crab and squid ink tobiko, together with the house mayonnaise and sweet teriyaki sauce, this sushi roll taste quite fine.

Alaska – £4.00
This is certainly something I haven’t seen before, according to the menu this is a fried roll with salmon, crab stick, avocado and cheese, also house mayonnaise and teriyaki sauce. The condiments on top is called furikake, typically consists of a mixture of dried and ground fish, sesame seeds, chopped seaweed, sugar, salt, and MSG. Normally furikake is spinkled on white rice and eaten just like that, that is why in my opinion the fusion was too much of a combination, without being able to have a specific taste to it. I would say it tasted average as it wasn’t too bad either.

Spicy Holborn – £4.00
Named after the area the restaurant was situated in, Spicy Holborn is another one of the special fusion dishes like Alaska. There were crab stick, cucumber with chopped eel, mixed vegetable, house mayonnaise, teriyaki, spicy sauce, furikake and fish roe on top in Spicy Holborn. Again, this is like Alaska in which the mass amount of ingredients inside this sushi roll had mixed up the whole taste.

Tamago Sushi – £2.50
A lot of you might know one of the many ways to test the skills of a Japanese chef is the Tamago dish, that is why I have decided to try this particular sushi. The texture of the tamago was quite good however it was sweetened too much which covered the taste of the egg greatly.

Crunchy – £3.00
Thinking that some of the sushis on the conveyor belt might have been left for a long time, I have decided to order a handroll as it would be freshly made. Crunchy hand roll, mainly named after the crispy prawn tempura inside, it consisted of salmon sashimi, avocado and tobiko on top also. The handroll tasted quite nice but there was a particular thing that didn’t felt right in which the tempura prawn was hot while the other ingredients were cold.

Tempura Prawn Soba – £8.50
Worrying that we might not be full just from eating sushi, we ordered the above dish in a way I wanted to taste dishes other than their sushi as well. Though I am not a fan of soup noodles, the clear soup base was really tasteful. The fact that I took some time to take this picture, resulted in the non-crispy tempura prawns and slightly soggy soba. A common knowledge is that soba should be eaten as soon as it is immersed in the soup to get the best taste out of it, due to my fault I wouldn’t be able to comment on the soba. Taste wise, the tempura prawn was still tasty and goes well with the soup.

Green Tea Ice cream – £3.00
A bit disappointed with the green tea ice cream, the texture was quite rough and taste wise, there was too much dairy to my liking and there weren’t much green tea taste.

Overall, it was a satisfying meal although some of the dishes might just be average. I have ordered a hot and a cold green tea respectively for £1.50 each.

Total Bill including service charges = around £45 for 2 persons

Personally, I give the ratings for this restaurant as follows:-
Food – 8/10
Value – 7/10

Details of the restaurant:
Sushi Hiroba
50-54 Kingsway
Holborn
London
WC2B 6EP
Telephone: +44(0)20 7430 1888Opening hours:
Monday – Friday: 12pm-3pm, 6pm-11pm
Saturday: 6pm – 11pm
Sunday & Bank Holiday: 6pm – 10:30pm

More information could be found at their official website.
http://www.sushihiroba.co.uk/

On a last note, I would like to say that this restaurant is definitely not for people with budget. However, it is one of the few and cheaper Japanese restaurants in Holborn area, and if you want to have a quick grab of decent sushi, this should be the place to go as most of the sushi’s on the conveyor belt are considered quite fresh also.

Wah Juan Coffee Shop (Mix Pork Intestine a.k.a Chu Chap 猪杂) @Tanjung Aru

Ever wonder where to get the best mix pork intestine in KK? Search no further, Wah Juan Coffee Shop in Tanjung Aru offers the best and fastest selling mix pork intestine and famous for their Kuching style Kon Lou Mee as well.

Why do I say fastest selling? Reason is, they start business around 7.30-8am everyday and their famous mix pork intestine is sold out by 10am latest.

So I have always wanted to eat it during my Summer holidays in KK but by the time I wake up everyday, it’s already sold out. This time I have particularly woken up early just to satisfy my cravings for it. I reached the place around 9.20am-ish, the place was still crowded and we had to wait a while for our tables.

After a few minutes of wait, my parents and I have decided to share a table with someone who was eating alone, so we quickly ordered our food and drinks without much hesitation because the pork intestines might be sold out anytime.
While waiting for our food to come, I have gone to observe how the Chef prepare the noodles and food.

As you can see, the workers are all working really fast and have their own specific tasks to prepare the food. The man in the picture is the son of the former who started this pork intestine business many years ago, till today they still maintaining their utmost standard.
The lady boss was helping out with the slicing of the pork intestines and caught me taking a picture of her, urgh!

Kon Lou Noodles – RM3 each (around £0.60)

As plain as it might seem, this plate of noodles is really addictive, comparable to the Italian Aglia Olio Linguine, it is both tasteful and appetizing, one thing to complain about is the small portion which is not enough for big eaters like me.

Pork Intestines for 3 ppl – RM12 (around £2.40)

This is the main dish and the one and only thing we have all been craving for! All the pork intestines have been well marinated and cooked overnight so it was chewy and tasteful! Seriously, I consider myself as someone who could taste out the ingredients of a dish quite often but for this dish, I had no idea what it was made of. It blended in so many different tastes of saltiness and sweetness, though I am quite sure there was at least some kind of chinese herbs used.

The only downside and factor preventing people from coming to this place to dine is the cleanliness of the place. If you were to judge it by Coffee Shop standard, it got to be 1 of the worse in KK, but that doesn’t really prevent most of the people from eating there though. Apart from that, their inflation in their price of food are quite high over the last few years, I guess famous places could do that without affecting their business much.

The ratings I give for this place are as follows:-
Food: 10/10
Cleanliness: 5/10
Value: 8/10

The red X marks the location of the place, the big roundabout is the one before Tanjung Aru Beach and Airasia Terminal 2 Airport.

How to Order Milk Tea in KK?

In Kota Kinabalu, we have quite a few ways of ordering Tea in coffee shops. If you guys have viewed my previous blog post about Ice Lemon Tea, you would understand that for any cold drinks, we add the term ‘Ping’ which also means Ice behind the name of our drinks.

The most common Milk Tea would be just ‘Teh’ and Teh C’. Wondering how the word C makes a difference? Let me tell you how, if you order ‘Teh’, they will serve you Tea with Condensed Milk, while for ‘Teh C’, the Milk Tea served would be using Sugar and Evaporated Milk. Both of these taste equally nice, so it’s up to personal preference on which one to order, but for myself, I would often order ‘Teh C Ping’ which is Teh C with Ice.

Apart from that, there are also terms ‘Teh O’ and ‘Teh Pok (薄)’, ‘Teh O’ would happen to be Tea without Milk while ‘Teh Pok’ would be the normal Milk Tea with condensed milk with less concentrated amount of Tea in it, so you might find this drink have a lighter brown colour. I hope all these ‘Teh’ terms haven’t confuse you guys as I have been trying to explain it as simple as possible.

So if you ever wonder about other drinks like Milk Coffee, the way of ordering it would be exactly the same as the Tea except you replace the word ‘Teh’ with ‘Kopi’. Normally the prices for these drinks at any normal coffee shops are around RM1.30-RM1.50(£0.30) for the hot one and RM1.80-RM2.00(£0.40) for the ones with Ice.

I hope this information have been useful and stay tune for new food updates soon!

Little Italy Pasta & Pizza Corner @Hotel Capital

If you ever ask people about Italian food in KK, one will not forget about the Pasta, Pizzas and Home-made Lemonade at Little Italy. Yes, I think most local Sabahans would agree that Little Italy is probably one of the nice Italian restaurants, if not the best in KK. Over the past few years, they have won countless awards including the Sabah Tourism Best Restaurant award many years back. Their business started off at 2000, till today they’re still maintaining their standards.

As my girlfriend is going back to KL in 2 and half hours time, we decided to have a quick meal at Little Italy at 4.30pm. So arriving the restaurant at such an odd hour, there were only 2 tables occupied and I was concerned about the quality of food as the main chef might not be cooking that time. My worries were right, the food quality did get affected, read on for the whole detailed review for the food.

Home-Made Lemonade (Large) – RM9.90 (around £2) x2
There is a regular size for this Lemonade which costs RM7.90, as I have not tried this for 1 year, I might as well pay a bit more for the large one.
Anyways, this is a definite MUST order drink at Little Italy, pricey as it is but you would never ever regret ordering this drink because it is really amazing. Thirst-quenching, refreshing, addictive is what I could describe from it, personally I have been to several countries in Europe such as Italy and France, but this is definitely the best Lemonade I have ever tried. Apart from the Lemon, I suspect they used Calamansi as well in it. Still, it doesn’t sum up to the complete taste of this amazing drink.

Puccia al Salmon (Italian Sandwich with Smoked Salmon) – RM18.50 (around £4)
You don’t get to see this often in other Italian restaurants in KK as it is quite a specialty for Little Italy. The bread dough itself is baked till crispy and the fillings are made up of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, smoked salmon as well as a sweet thousand island sauce.

Normally, the bread dough served would be crispy, somehow the one today had a slight hardness to it and wasn’t as crispy as it normally does.

Aglio Olio Fettucine with Chilli (Fettucine pasta with Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Chilli) – RM22.90 (around £5)
There was this Spicy Aglio Olio Fettucine as a new dish in their menu, it sounded promising hence we’ve ordered it. We were quite excited on how it would taste like, however it kinda gave me a bit of disappointment.

Any kind of pasta, for instance spaghetti, fettucine, linguine, parpadelle, risotto and etc, are the MOST important thing in cooking a good pasta dish, TIMING in cooking it is everything. The quality of olive oil or ingredients comes second. I myself cook pasta a lot, that’s why the moment I tasted this fettucine dish, I immediately sensed something wrong and the pasta was undercooked for a bit. The texture wasn’t as springy as it supposed to be and there were lumps of pasta sticked together due to it not being fully cooked.

Yes, you could see from this picture the pasta is sticked together for a bit.

Don’t get me wrong here, I think this is wholly due to the odd times I dine at the restaurant and I strongly believe that during normal times, they’d still maintain their highest quality of food. Apart from the pasta being a bit ‘raw’, the taste of the dish was quite good, it’s obvious that they’re using quality extra virgin olive oil in their Aglio Olio dishes.

The services at this place was superb, waiters were really friendly and in addition, the strong Italian ambiance compensated for the slight drop in food quality and added value to this meal. Hence, my strong advice is to visit the restaurant at normal dinner or lunch times instead to get the full dining experience.

Total damage for this meal for 2 persons = RM70.40

Ratings I’d give for this visit:-
Food: 8/10 (Still worthed an 8 because during normal times, it’d easily be a 10)
Cleanliness: 9/10
Value: 9/10

Details of the restaurant:-
Address: No.23 Jalan Haji Saman, Ground Floor, Hotel Capital, 88813 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.
Tel/Fax: 088-232231
Open times: 10.30am – 11.00pm
Website: http://www.littleitaly-kk.com

Kuo Man Restaurant @Sunny Garden

Date visited: 16th September

Kuo Man is one of the more famous coffee shops in KK for their home-made fish cakes    (鱼滑), tender beef slices (牛滑), as well as their chewy noodles.

As you can see from above, you could see on their walls some pictures showing TV programmes have been filmed here before, as well as some articles in magazines.

As famous as it is, their food is really quite good but 1 thing I dislike about coming here is their portion of dishes are very small and the price is slightly more expensive compared to other coffee shops in KK.

Tender beef slices and fish slices with Kon Lou Noodles (干捞面）- RM7 (around £1.5)
Normally, the beef and fish slices are served separately in a bowl of soup but I had them served with the noodle because I liked it better this way for some reason.
As you can see, this plate of noodles only had only 2 fish slices and 3 pieces of tender beef. Believe me, I finished my dish in less than 5 minutes. Taste wise, I have always loved the tender beef slices here because they somehow added some special ingredients to it making the beef very tender and chewy, fish slices were just normal so nothing much to talk about. Besides that, I believe their noodles are home-made as well because you can’t find noodles similar to this one in other places in KK, it was chewy and the texture was just nice.

Fish Cake (鱼滑）and Beef slices with Kon Lou Noodles – RM7 (around ££1.50)
If not requested, the meat would be serve in the bowl of soup as above with an plate of plain noodles.
The taste of soup is just sweet enough and not too strong, the fish cake was chewy and tender as well just like the beef. Not exactly my favourite dish because they have used an ingredient inside which wasn’t my favourite choice. However, fish-lovers would definitely love the fish cakes.

The ratings I give for this place are as follows:-
Food: 8.5/10
Cleanliness: 7/10
Value: 6.5/10

Location of the restaurant:-

Nishiki Japanese Restaurant @Jesselton Point

‘The Oldest… Still the best’, this is the slogan of this particular Japanese restaurant in KK.
Nishiki, having started their business during year 1962, is the very first Japanese restaurant opened in Kota Kinabalu. In my opinion, after having tasted many other Japanese restaurants over here, they do live up to their reputation of being the oldest yet still the best. Recently, they have moved from their old place at Jalan Gaya to Jesselton Point for some reason, which I think might be a temporary settlement because the new place seems to be a bit small compared to their previous one.

My girlfriend is having her last day of her trip in Kota Kinabalu and have been wanting to try the Japanese food here because of me telling her about it quite often, so I have decided to let her try this so called ‘Best japanese food in KK’ by me.

Yes, your first impression would be the entrance of the restaurant does not look appealing at all, but don’t judge a book by its cover, the food is the main attraction of this place. So we went there quite early before 7pm, only a few tables are occupied that time, later then we found out that everyone comes to dinner very late.

So this is the slogan that I mentioned earlier written on their serviette.

Salmon Temaki Zushi – RM12 (around £2.50)
So this might seem to be a simple Salmon Temaki Handroll, but let me first shed some light on what defines and makes a simple sushi taste delicious:-
1) The ingredients used must be fresh especially the salmon and cucumber in this case
2) Quality vinegar and the right amount used ensuring the vinegar taste wouldn’t cover it
3) Additional X-factor to stand out to others.
This particular Temaki Handroll fulfilled all these 3 criteria, the X-factor being some sesame seeds and wasabi found inside the handroll. Not only you get the ‘kick’ through the wasabi, the slight taste of sesame seed combined with the freshness of the salmon sashimi and cucumber is everything you could ask for in a Handroll!

Californa Maki with Prawn – RM18 (around £4)
Originally, Avocado is used in this sushi but since they ran out of avocados, the waitress suggested that we could change it to prawns instead. Initially I was having doubts whether it would go well with other ingredients of crabstick and cucumber, boy I was wrong it’s as good as the original one. Again, the ingredients were really fresh and you could literally taste the freshness of prawns through it. With the additional taste of crab roes and sesame seeds, hence a dish I’d always crave for when having a meal at this place.

Garlic Fried Rice – RM6 (around £1.20)
People who know Japanese culture well would know that Japanese people do not use any Garlic at all in their cooking, so the garlic fried rice here is what we call fusion or adaptation to local tastes. However, there are a lot of fusion food which met failure, but this is an exception. Before even tasting it, you could already smell the strong fragrant garlic from the rice, the rice itself was very tasteful as well.

Gyuniku Tamanegi Yaki – RM16 (around £3.30)
Beef with onions, normally I don’t fancy eating onions because of the strong onion taste, but this one was exceptional, the beef was tender and well marinated and I suggest eating it together with the onions, it tasted really good.

Tori Kuwa Yaki – RM16 (around £3.30)
Chicken teriyaki, a dish that is practically available at any Japanese restaurant, the version at Nishiki also stands out from others because the skin of the chicken has a slight crisp to it, making it even more delicious.

Agedashi Tofu – RM8 (around £1.70)
There are many ways to test the chef’s skills in a japanese restaurant. Some say that it’s by testing out their Tamago (Egg roll), some say is Futomaki (A kind of sushi roll), but in my opinion, the Agedashi Tofu dish also requires one heck of a cooking skill to perfect it. I must say, the one here is of very high standard, reason is that the beancurd has to be carefully deep fried and timing is most important. From the time of deep frying to pouring the sauce inside is hard to be perfected, so I would say this is a must try dish if you ever patron Nishiki.

A satisfying meal indeed, but the final bill came up a bit pricey for KK standard.
Total bill = RM94.82 (around £19) for 2 persons

Ratings are as follows:-
Food: 9.5/10
Cleanliness: 9/10
Value: 9/10

Details of restaurant are as follow:-
Current Address: It’s along the Jesselton Point road (The harbour where we take boats to Islands)
Old Address: No. G1, Nosmal Court, 59 Gaya Street, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.
Tel: 088-230582
Business Hour: 11.30am -2.00pm, 6.30pm – 10pm (Closed normally on Mondays)

Mangosteen a.k.a Queen of Fruits

Mangosteen, is known as the Queen of fruits in Malaysia, second after Durian which happens to be the King of all fruits.
Unlike Durian, Mangosteen is not known much to foreign people. It is a tropical fruit believed to have originated from islands around Malaysia and Indonesia. It is a purple coloured fruit with green coloured stem and petals, the picture I took above is not really a good example because it’s too ripe and smaller than normal ones.

Noticed how I positioned the second mangosteen? Here’s an interesting fact that would keep you wondering about the wonders of nature. The pattern on the bottom of a mangosteen indicates the number of flesh it has inside the fruit, for instance the mangosteen in the picture has 6 petals, which means it has 6 pieces inside. Unbelievable? I have often done numerous tests of it when I was still a young kid, and it never goes wrong!

To open up a mangosteen, you can just use your fingers to crack it open, you would come to find that the interior sides of a mangosteen would leave a purple stain on your fingers easily which is only washable using soap after that. The flesh is white in colour and most of them would have a seed inside it.
Now for the taste, I personally love to eat mangosteen because it has a unique sweet taste to it unlike any other citrus fruits. Not being able to emit a strong smell like the Durian, the Queen of fruits show it’s true self only after having you tasted it.

Why do we call it the Queen of Fruits? As we all know, Durian a.k.a King of Fruits is a ‘hot’ fruit that would easily cause sorethroat or fever if taken too much, while Mangosteen here is a ‘cold’ fruit which would kind of neutralise the ‘hotness’ of the Durian, Hot n Cold, I guess that’s one of the reasons Mangosteen is called the Queen.

Yu Kee Bah Kut Teh @Jalan Gaya

Date visited: 14th September

If you ever come to Malaysia, Bah Kut Teh is a must try food as it is one of the signature dishes loved by many and a lot people crave for. Bah Kut Teh simply means ‘Meat Bone Tea’ in Hokkien dialect, mainly because the soup base itself is cooked for a period of time using mainly bones of pig as well as a variety of Chinese herbs.

Bah Kut Teh has a long line of history having itself originated and created by the poorer Hokkien people who used to do heavy duty work by the harbours in West Malaysia. In the olden days, these group of Hokkien people would gather together and cook this dish in a big claypot using bones of pig and then consume it together with white rice. This was quite an economical way as they could keep the soup for days and the taste of it gets even better as the sweetness of the bones blends with the soup. As time goes by, Bah Kut Teh have been slowly commercialised and we put in different pork meats and even seafood as well to serve as dishes. Seafood Bah Kut Teh is the specialty of Sandakan City in Sabah state as seafood is readily available there and cheap as well.

Tonight, I have decided to bring my girlfriend to try out Yu Kee Bah Kut Teh in KK as it is comparable or even better than the famous Klang Bah Kut Teh in West Malaysia. Having been to this joint many times before, I knew that I would have to go there early to avoid big crowds even though it was a weekday. We arrived there around 6.30pm and to my expectations, the place was almost full and there were only a few empty tables left when we arrived.

One particular thing you might notice are the mini tea cups and tea pot served in this place and cutleries are served in hot water, somehow it is more for the purpose of cleanliness as cutleries in these coffee shop places might not be thoroughly washed sometimes.

Before proceeding with the food pictures, I would like to apologise beforehand with the crappy pictures as we were too hungry and didn’t really make an effort in taking the best angle, hope you all don’t mind! After we have ordered our food, it took hardly even 5 minutes for it to come to our table. It was really lightning fast considering the amount of patrons in the restaurant.

Yau Zar Gwai (Deep fried twisted bread dough) – RM1 (around £0.20)

Tau Fu Pok (Deep fried dry bean curd) – RM1 (around £0.20)

The above are the essential side dishes of a Bah Kut Teh meal, there wasn’t anything special about it so I’ll leave the blogging for the main attractions coming up.

3 Layers Pork meat – RM5.50 (around £1.10)

Spare ribs – RM5.50 (around £1.10)

Pork Intestine (Stomach) – RM5.50 (around £1.10)

Pork meatballs – RM6.00 (around £1.20)

The most important part in a Bah Kut Teh meal is the soup itself. Other than the dishes, we get a bowl of soup to go with the rice also. The selling point of Yu Kee Bah Kut Teh is definitely the soup that tastes incredibly awesome, rich and sweet taste due to the bones as well as the slight but not too strong taste of Chinese herbs. Besides that, all their meat are well marinated and tenderly juicy enough for you to ask for more. A simple proof was that we ordered a 2nd dish of spare ribs because it was just so addictive.
For the meatballs, the Bah Kut Teh soup used was a bit different as slight taste of ginger and light soya sauce could be tasted in the soup, probably due to the different way of cooking meatballs as I could see it being prepared at a different section.
I suggest the best sauce to go with the meat is some dried chillies immersed in their dark thick soy sauce which is readily available on the table.

Stir fry Veggie with Oyster Sauce – RM8 (around £1.70)

The veggie was just a simply dish yet it tasted quite good as well because of the fragrant fried minced garlic on top and the oyster sauce.

Here is how they prepare their food, one may find it really amusing as there are only a few workers handling that large amount of dishes in the picture and they were able to do it efficiently. Main reason is that most of these workers have been working for the owner for a long time and they’re all really experienced workers. As you can see from a signboard on the top left of the picture, they take day offs and do not open during Mondays.

Total Damage: RM43 (around £9) for 2 person

Ratings I give for this joint:-
Food: 9.5/10
Cleanliness: 8/10
Value: 10/10

Details of the place:-
Address: 71 Jalan Gaya, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah (It is just opposite Jesselton Hotel)
Opening times: Closed on Mondays, opened during the evening from 5-5.30pm-ish

Lemon Teh Ping a.k.a Ice Lemon Tea

As the title says so, this is a popular drink at Coffee Shops in Sabah. Let me translate, ‘Teh’ simply means Tea in Malay or Hokkien language while ‘Ping’ is actually Ice in Mandarin. Funny it is, but this is how we order drinks in Sabah where cold drinks with ice cubes would end up with the word ‘Ping’ at the end.

Lemon Teh Ping is simply the Sabah version of Ice Lemon Tea. This is my favourite drink whenever I patronise coffee shops for breakfast/lunch. It is really simple to make this yourself. The ingredients you need are just lemon slices, chinese tea, ice cubes and syrups. You first add in lemon slices and ice cubes into a glass/cup, then add warm chinese tea into it, from here you can add syrups to your liking. At the same time, you should use a spoon as well to crush the lemon slices so that the lemon juices mixes with your drink.

Thus, you get a refreshing and thirst-quenching drink.

Lok Kyun Restaurant @Tuaran Town

Tuaran Fried Noodle is a famous dish in Kota Kinabalu that has a certain history to it. As the name states, it is originated from Tuaran Town and is a special kind of handmade egg-noodle which have a springy texture to it. It is normally eaten with Cha Siu (Roast pork), Sheng Rou (pork), and Chun Juan, 春卷 (a special kind of pork meat loaf only available in Sabah). As the popularity of the noodles increased over the years, there exists the variation with fish slices and prawns.

In order to get the best out of the noodle, my dad suggested that we could drive to Tuaran to try out the coffee shop where the noodles originated from. From KK City Centre, it takes around 35-40 minutes to get to Tuaran Town. So my dad called up his elder sister who used to live in Tuaran many years back to enquire about the name of that very restaurant.

So here we are at the restaurant, feeling excited.

Apparently Tuaran Fried Noodle isn’t their only specialty and they have quite a few dishes introduced as well.

We have all ordered the same thing, Tuaran Fried Noodle, besides that we have decided to try their Tofu with Meat (酿豆腐), which happens to be their specialty as well.

Tofu with Meat (酿豆腐) – RM1 each (around £0.20)
Don’t judge the Tofu by it’s colour, it was actually quite nice with the texture, sauce and meat blended properly but I wouldn’t say it’s the best in KK as better ones could be found.

Tuaran Fried Noodle – RM5 (around £1)
This is what we all have been waiting for, the original Tuaran fried noodle. The pork meat with yellow ‘skin’ is what we call Chun Juan (春卷), unfortunately they’ve ran out of it and only gave us 1 piece each person. The first bite of the noodle just kept me wondering how the heck did they made the particular noodle and even maintain the springiness even after stir frying it. The noodle itself is so addictive that you can just eat it without having any meat. The slight downside of this dish is the ‘Cha Siu’ (roast pork) which was a bit dry to my liking, but other than that, the other meat tastes just fine and goes nicely with the noodle.

Home-Made Chilli sauce, this is 1 of the specialties of Sabah as every single restaurant or coffee shop in Sabah would at least serve chilli similar to this. There are many variants of it everywhere, in which some of the chilli brings out a sweet taste other than the spiciness of it. Home-made ones are always the best and some of them were able to make quite a business out of it.

Nonetheless, this was definitely a satisfying meal, unfortunately I don’t think I’d be coming back soon because I can still get the same alternatives in KK City also, just that the noodles might be slightly different.

Ratings:-
Food: 9/10
Cleaniness: 8/10
Value:10/10

Apologies for not being able to give much information about this place as I am not familiar with Tuaran Town at all. If you ever have the chance to go to Tuaran, do try out this place where Tuaran Fried Noodle originated from. Tuaran Town is really small and you could just ask around to enquire about this place. That’s all for now, thanks for reading!