Girl & Mommy Curry Mee @ Chan Sow Lin

I finally dropped by Girl & Mommy Curry Mee @ Chan Sow Lin to try their famous curry mee I've heard so much about for a while now.  It's run by a mother and daughter team and they relocated here in 2020 (during the pandemic) from their previous location at Chan Sow Lin Foodcourt.

It's a no-frills, unassuming place in a zinc-roofed shed.  It isn't the most comfortable place to eat as I found it a bit hot and humid even when there were ceiling fans (and I was there in the morning!).  The place is kinda small and looked somewhat unkept/messy (as half the place seems taken up by a lot of storage items), so expect a wait for tables during busy hours since tables are limited.

We came on a public holiday as I've heard about the difficulty in finding parking space in this industrial area of Sungei Besi full of factories and was rather lucky to get a spot just in front of the shop.  Even though we got there early (around 8.30 am), we snagged the last small table available which was right in front of their stall/cooking station (just past the fencing gate).

We later realised that was probably not the best place to sit as the menu was propped up against the stall's counter and customers that were queuing (a steady queue started when we were tucking into our noodles) or entering the shop would stand there (right beside our table) to look at the menu to see what is offered and some would sneak a glance or two at what we were having while at it. ;P

We came here with one intention in mind and that was to try their Curry Mee @ RM10 (small, RM12 for big). There are two options here...you can choose to have your curry noodles with siu yuk (roast pork) or chicken. My husband obviously went for the roast pork.

The other ingredients in this bowl of curry mee included pork rind, tofu puffs, taugeh (beansprouts), sihum (cockles/kerang) and your choice of meat (in this case, siu yuk and it was plentiful).  The roast pork is (of course) not of the standard of roasted meat stalls but still nicely savoury with crispy skin.

I did ask for wantan mee for our curry noodles but the worker said "don't have".  Not sure if she meant "don't have at all" or "don't have for that day", so we settled for bihun + mee instead (their mee is flatter, slightly different from the usual yellow mee).

My bowl of Curry Mee also @ RM10 (small)...and small is already too big for me with big portion of noodles (which I had to pass to my spouse).  It had the same usual suspects as ingredients with the earlier bowl except mine came with poached chicken as my option of meat.  The poached chicken was respectably executed to decent standards with tender meat.

When I took a sip of the broth, the first thing I felt was that it wasn't hot enough (at least not my definition of piping hot).  It had a fair dose of santan flavour and was fairly thick, overall a more than decent curry.  My husband said that the curry tasted better without the addition of sambal (which was available tableside for you to help yourselves to) as the sambal made the curry take on a sourish note (I didn't add much sambal, so I didn't taste a difference).

I decided to add on sihum for RM4 and was flabbergasted to see the insanely huge amount of sihum given when my bowl of curry mee arrived.  Sihum has become a rather expensive ingredient and most curry mee/char kway teow stalls are usually quite stingy with it, so I didn't think I would get so much for RM4.

I did see photos of their curry mee online piled with a mountain load of cockles but I thought that was their Big Mac Curry Mee, a super big bowl of curry mee with overflowing cockles, for a whopping RM23.  That said, the cockles are super fresh, bloody, plump and juicy.....everything you'd want in a sihum...and bloody good (pun intended), I tell ya! ^o^

But for those who want to eat kerang in moderation, you certainly don't need to ask for any add-on kerang as the standard amount they give is already adequate (probably 3 times more than other places).  This add-on amount is good enough for 4 - 5 portions of curry mee.  After all, kerang isn't something we should eat too much of (some will say not at all).  Oops, I got even more when my husband's kerang landed in my bowl! >_<

If there were any negatives, I thought the tofu puffs were cut up a bit too small (at least on our visit there). They should be cut into bigger pieces (as in halved) to allow it to soak up enough broth for a greater burst of sensation when we bite into them.  The other negative I had was that I found the broth not piping hot enough.  I say this coz I usually like to submerge my sihum into the hot broth to cook it just a little to take the raw edge out of the cockles.  Here, it didn't do that for me as I could still taste the raw blood (or perhaps I had a little too much cockles?).  Although cockles are best eaten raw, sometimes the bloody taste (no pun intended) can get to you (you know, like fresh blood in your mouth when your teeth/mouth bleeds...lol..and that's not something I want to taste).

Besides curry mee, they also serve beef tripe and tendon soup and noodles, pork ribs curry, braised chicken feet, saury (mackerel pike) fish ball noodles and fish skin wantans.  We decided to get an order of Fish Skin Wantans @ RM10 (for 10 pcs) to share as it's something I absolutely love to eat.

To my surprise, the fish skin wantans were very good but not the soup base though.  The thickness and texture of the fish skin were just right and the pork mince filling had a very nice fragrant aftertaste (I'm guessing fragrant dried sole fish/flounder powder may have been used).  It's like fragrant dried cuttlefish used in pork meatballs, only better! ;)  The fish skin wantan seems to be under the radar since I've not seen any reviews mentioning it when reading reviews on their curry mee.  If you like fish skin wantans, you must give this a try.

My Personal Opinion

This place is known for its generous toppings in their bowl of curry laksa (and they were indeed generous)...and an even more generous amount of fresh cockles! ^.^  As much as I love cockles, it was too much for me in one sitting (I can't believe I'm saying this but I felt a bit jelak trying to finish it because of the abundant raw blood taste).  Then again, I only have myself to blame for getting add-on cockles!  Believe me when I say you don't need any add-on cockles here as the amount given is already sufficient.

I don't know how their beef or fish ball noodles fare (since I didn't try)...and don't think I would (try the latter) after seeing that their soup base (for the fish skin wantans) didn't impress.  But I definitely recommend their surprisingly good fish skin wantans though.

So, for ardent fans of cockles where no amount of sihum is ever too much, this is the place to get your sihum fix as their bowl of curry mee comes fully loaded with kerang unlike elsewhere where they're so kedekut (stingy) with this rather precious commodity! ^_~

Girl & Mommy Curry Mee

33 Jalan Emas

Chan Sow Lin

55200 Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 018-321 4606