This
Mee Jawa from
Restoran Wan Shoon @ Damansara Kim has had a steady following since an article in
Malay Mail featured it in 2022 and I was subsequently reminded of it by my circle of blogger acquaintances/friends,
kyspeaks,
phonghongbakes and
choiyen.com when they tried it. How could I not try when all of them sang praises of it, right? ^_~
This coffee shop houses a number of other stalls selling chicken rice,
char kway teow, curry mee,
sam kan chong,
Kampar fish ball mee,
popiah,
chee cheong fun + yong tau foo and others.
But if you google this restaurant for reviews of what to eat, it's all about this stall! ;) You'll practically find nothing much mentioned about the other stalls here other than this sought-after
mee jawa.
Since that's what I specifically came here for, let's start with that. A standard bowl of
Penang Mee Jawa is RM8.50 but mine has something lurking at the back...
hehe. The bowl was filled with small prawns, tofu slices, hard-boiled egg, beansprouts and very finely shredded lettuce, finished with a crispy topping (of crushed peanuts and possibly some kind of crispy bits of batter?). There's also a piece of crispy
keropok (cracker) which is a bit different from other
mee jawa(s) that I've had served standing upright on the plate. I liked that the cracker tasted savoury and was slightly thicker (than those regular, thin type usually used in other mee jawa) but still very crunchy. I've to admit that the
whole ensemble made it the most beautifully presented plate of
mee jawa I've seen.
The first thing that hits your senses when the dish arrived at the table was the smell of the lime. The notable difference here is that the
lime juice is already squeezed into the dish by the stall owner (which I appreciate as I hate to dirty my hands and squeeze it myself). The freshness and zestiness of the lime juice (and enough of it) balances out the sweetness in the gravy perfectly and that was what I thought was a key difference with this
mee jawa.
I initially ordered just mee (coz usually only mee is offered by vendors of
mee jawa) but I overheard someone ordering meehoon mee, so I asked for my order to be changed. When it arrived, I noticed there was only mee, so I thought the lady forgot to change my order. On digging further, I realised the
noodles had two colours, yellow and white (similar to those thick meehoon). Biting into the noodles, the texture of the yellow noodles seemed different from our usual yellow mee, this one is thicker like spaghetti noodles but with a softer texture. Very nice.
As for the
sauce, I'm not sure what it's made of but it had a sweetness to it, so I'm thinking it's probably from sweet potatoes (maybe with a combination of potatoes) and tomatoes as well. It's not spicy at all (though I've seen some photos with a spoonful of sambal at the side...maybe only upon request) nor sour (from the lime which gives it a fresh lift). It's not too thick either, nor overly sweet and tomato-ey (like some) but is adequately thick to coat the noodles nicely....and then you get this fragrant, crunchy texture from the toppings of finely crushed nuts.
As I mentioned earlier, mine had something lurking sneakily at the back...and it was a piece of
vegetable fritter @ RM3 (so my plate of
mee jawa cost RM11.50 in total). The fritter, probably made up of vegetables such as jicama, chives, onions and carrot, was excellent. The fritter was incredibly fragrant (and they don't stinge on the chives) with a hint of sweetness (I'm guessing that there could be some sweet potato shreds in the mix). You must get this add-on fritter...so, so good, one of the better vegetable fritters I've had in a long time!
My empty bowl that has been
licked spooned clean speaks for itself...a testament to just how good it was with its gravy slurped down to the last drop! If I had my way, I would want more gravy coz both the cracker and fritter is best eaten dunked into the sauce.
The same stall also sells
Penang Prawn Noodle which I came back to try on my second visit. The bowl is filled with the usual ingredients of prawns, pork, hard-boiled egg slices,
kangkung, beansprouts and fried onions you'd find in a typical bowl of prawn mee.
But the differences in the standard ingredients were that the prawns were tiny (too tiny for a proper bowl of prawn mee), the pork weren't in thin slices but in tiny cubes (which resulted in a different mouth feel) and the fried onions were the store-bought kind, not own-made. The broth tasted light with a bit of prawn flavour coming through. This prawn mee reminded me of the one in
Restoran Yong Len in TTDI (which have its followers). If you prefer a lighter broth, this might suit you but, in the end, it was just a very average bowl of prawn mee for me that's not worth my while to travel so far for...should have just stuck with the
mee jawa! ;D
Like any coffee shop, it's not only home to the
jawa mee stall but a number of other food stalls. Since my family isn't a fan of
jawa mee, my husband ordered the
Curry Mee with poached chicken, tofu puffs, long beans and beansprouts (he omitted the cockles).
Seeing that my husband ate it silently, I knew it was no where near some of the good ones we had. On tasting, the poached chicken was edible but the curry broth was just too thin and light.
My son tried the
Siu Yuk/Char Siew Rice which, from the looks, you can pretty much guess it's nothing remarkable and
wantan mee (on our second visit) which was even less inspiring (to even take a photo) that came with pinkish
char siew and (he said) the filling of the
wantans tasted sourish. >.<
On the way out, I saw that the roasted meat stall was called
Fatt Kee Soy Sauce Chicken Rice (I was wondering why the name sounded familiar...only when I was writing this I realised that
phonghongbakes has eaten this before). Well, you don't need to ask what's the best seller here (judging from the number of soy sauce chicken hanging at their stall compared to the scarce slabs of
siu yuk and
char siew...and also their name, obviously). Even I am not into soy sauce chicken (which looked like chicken poached/braised in soy sauce), I'd rather have either roasted or poached chicken (not something in between...
lol).
I decided to
tapau the
Char Kway Teow (with duck egg) for my lunch later as I heard a lot of
wok-ing noise while I was there
. On opening the packet, I was greeted with a disappointing sight (and smell) of light coloured noodles lacking the necessary char and fragrance (even with lap cheong). Yes, of course I lowered my standard since I was eating it cold but the taste was still
meh.
After coming all the way here (for a second time), I wasn't about to miss out eating the best thing here again, so I decided to
tapau one for my lunch later. Back home, I reheated the gravy and poured it over the noodles, the result of which isn't as presentable but taste good just the same.
Seeing that I was given the thicker meehoon the first time, I asked if they had the regular thin meehoon, the outcome of which is.....forget about the thin meehoon! Eat it with just mee (or if you absolutely must have meehoon, have it with the thick meehoon which has the same mouthfeel as the mee). It's called
mee (not
meehoon)
jawa for a reason....
lol!
The cracker and vegetable fritter was packed separately and both managed to retain their crispiness and crunchiness even when consumed later. The lady owner who was packing my order gave me broken pieces of cracker as she was reaching the bottom of her
tong of crackers (which she later replenished with new ones). There were a lot of small shattered pieces at the bottom of the plate which I discarded (I thought it wasn't very nice of her to unload the shattered pieces on me especially when I saw her worker had ready pre-packed big ones). Obviously, the bite is very different if you're not chomping down on a complete big piece.
My Personal Opinion
I've not eaten enough mee jawa to be an authority on it but I've not eaten a mee jawa as good as this so far. Sadly, it's also the only thing worth eating here as the other offerings failed to ignite any interest in us having it again. So it's no suprise that when you google this restaurant, you only find reviews of the mee jawa and nothing else.
Since the rest of the stalls we tried were run-of-the-mill food and my family isn't that into mee jawa (my husband actually had mee jawa on our second visit as there were no other alternatives that he fancied), it's highly unlikely that we'll be back to this kopitiam (why travel so far just for mundane food). That means my only chance of having this splendid mee jawa again is if my husband happens to be in the vicinity to tapau for me. :(
For the rest of you who are from this area (or its surrounding areas), count your lucky stars that you have a smashing mee jawa near you.
Wan Shoon Restaurant
47 Jalan SS20/11
Who is Damansara?
47400 Petaling Jaya
Selangor
