Chang Kitchen (Besides Beef Noodles) @ Pandan Indah

I first visited Chang Kitchen Beef Noodles @ Pandan Indah for their beef noodles specifically.  After all, their signboard clearly points to them being a beef noodle specialist and most will think that's the only thing they serve.

Well, suffice to say, I've tried all their beef noodle variations...in soup or dry version....with beef balls, beef brisket (ngau lam), raw beef slices or beef mix (with beef stomach or tendon) but I don't like to eat the latter two including omasum (ngau pak yip aka some kind of beef tripe).

When I'm here, I usually have the beef balls and brisket paired with dry (wantan) noodles, second only to my favourite of the lot which is the raw beef slices.

They do offer other types of noodles besides beef noodles like fish ball, mutton noodles and wantan mee as well as nasi lemak (plain, with chicken or abalone).  So, here's the rest of the menu that I tried other than the beef noodles.

Starting with the Fish Ball Noodles @ RM7 that's available dry-style or in soup.  What you get are three large-sized fish balls, fried fu chuk (beancurd sheets) and some greens of sang choy (lettuce).  The fish balls were overly bouncy (commercially-produced ones, I reckon) with a soup base that tastes generic (you'd know when a stock wasn't the result of hours and hours of boiling).

I paired it with dry wantan noodles (with a few crispy pork lard thrown in).  This fish ball noodles was most probably included in the menu just for people who don't eat beef as it was obvious the dish was put together without much thought or effort.

If you don't eat beef, there's also the Wantan Minced Pork Noodles @ RM7 that you can choose to have.  This time, the wantan noodles came with the addition of minced pork which was tasty.

The wantans, with a minced pork filling, were plain and ordinary like many other wantans out there.  The soup base tasted similar to the one with the fish ball noodles, probably made with some flavour enhancers! >_<

At least this one tasted much better than the fish balls noodles and I did appreciate the extra effort put into the making of the minced pork themselves.

If you don't eat beef, you can ask for pork balls instead which can come in either the beef broth or the broth they use for the fish balls or wantans, your choice.  This one was a mixture of beef and pork balls (the pork balls are the slightly larger ones, at times I got 4 beef + 3 pork but sometimes it's 5 + 2).  I could taste the dried squid bits in the pork ball mix, so they were very pleasant.

Recently, I've started to have my beef noodles with lai fun (thick rice noodles), a type of noodle usually associated with assam laksa (and beef noodles), just that I wasn't aware they had it here (I think the noodle choices were written in Chinese in the menu, that's why!) until one day the person who took my order rattled away the noodle choices, only then I came to know....and it has been my first choice ever since.  I don't know what is it about lai fun with beef noodles, it just goes so well together.

Nasi lemak offers a choice to those who want to eat rice rather than noodles.  You have an option of plain (RM4) or with abalone (RM25!).  I went for the Nasi Lemak with Chicken @ RM9.  It was fried chicken with acar (pickled vegetables), hard-boiled egg, kacang & ikan bilis and sambal.

The fried chicken, which looked like a version of ayam goreng berempah, unfortunately lacked marination + it was cold and dry (obviously it was not fried to order but pre-fried some time ago).  The acar was ok and I did like the fragrant and fresh taste of the peanuts and (better quality) crispy silver fish (aka tiny ikan bilis) but the sambal was atrocious.  From the colour, it has obviously not been cooked long enough (or as they say "kena tumis sampai pecah minyak dan wangi") but, worst still, it had a tinge of sourness instead of being sweetly spicy or spicily sweet.  It was a shame as the rice was suficiently lemak.  Definitely not something I'd have again.

Well, if you don't want any noodles or rice, you can have a simple breakfast of eggs & toast for RM5, Kaya Toast @ RM2.50 and Half-Boiled Eggs @ RM2.50.

The good thing is, for the price, you get kampung (or free-range) eggs here.  They're brought to the table steeping in hot water and told to give it 5 minutes.  Is this to custom-cook them the way you like it or to exonerate them in case they bring you overcooked eggs? >_<  I see more and more coffee shops doing it this way nowadays...I just wish they'd bring them cooked already.  That way I can send them back if they're overdone...wuahahahaha....instead of me having to keep an eye on it to know when it's done.

The kaya toast, using traditional coffeeshop-style bread, had quite a few slivers of cold butter in between a decent-tasting, sweetish kaya.  Can't go wrong with a light breakfast like this.

Mutton Noodles (RM15) and Mutton Soup (RM20) makes up the balance of their menu.  Well, since I don't like mutton, I won't be trying any of the mutton dishes.  I wonder if anyone orders the mutton noodles since many Chinese don't eat beef and even lesser eat mutton (!).

My Personal Opinion

It's quite obvious that the other noodles and nasi lemak were put on the menu for people who simply don't eat beef.  And let's just say those aren't their forte...their speciality is still beef noodles.

Even though their fish ball noodles and nasi lemak aren't anywhere near remotely good (per my standards), I'm quietly happy for them when I see their santan rice running out by 2 pm and people packing extra fish balls home (after their meal).  I want them to endure, so I'm rooting for them to survive as I actually like eating here coz the place is air-conditioned and spacious, the owners are friendly, parking is plentiful and there's never a crowd though the latter isn't necessarily a good thing for them. ^_~

If you don't mind a non-char siew type of wantan noodles, the one here with minced pork isn't too shabby. This, and the beef noodles (with either raw beef slices or a mixture of beef and pork balls), are the only two things I go for here.  

Chang Kitchen Beef Noodle
14 Jalan Pandan Indah 1/18
Pandan Indah
55100 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-9201 7059