M’sia – Goon Wah Restaurant, G13 Jalan 3/115C, Taman Kuchai Lama, 58200 Kuala Lumpur

I was sitting around with not much keeping me busy, and thought I'd go through all the draft posts I have. Whaddya know! Found this one which I'd been meaning to post about for a while, but it must have got lost in the queue somewhere along the line (ha ha).

Anyhow, this was one of the places we went to quite some time ago, and for all the food in the world, I don't know where it is (I googled and found the address which you see in the title bar, but that's about all I know).

Once you get there, parking is pretty much impossible. If you see one, then you almost HAVE to park there (even if you weren't considering eating here) because how can you let that parking opportunity go by.

Setting-wise and all that - it's 2 shoplots joined as one, with one side being air-conditioned and the other not. Which explains why all the customers are in one side of the restaurant. Maybe now they've decided to air-condition both, don't know for sure, not been there since this time quite a while back.

There's not much pretense about this place. You sit down if you get a table. The waiting staff put some chopsticks, hot water bowl (to rinse the utensils with), and a few small plates for the chilli dip on the table, and off you go with the order. I'm not sure if they have a menu but there were quite a few pictures of what was on offer on the walls, so maybe the pick-and-point technique might work too.

Because this was eaten so long ago, and because I didn't know the price of these things back when I was eating it, chances of me actually knowing what they cost now are ... slim. Starting off with the fish head bee hoon which is one of the popular dishes here (actually, this useful link says that it's about RM14 for a pot).

On a side note, this is one of those restaurants which don't serve you all the dishes under the sun, but they do what they do really well. So, if you're not one of those fussy pots who only have their Big Macs a certain way and are willing to try what they have to offer, then you're off to a good start.

So, the fish head bee hoon. This was served in a big clay pot which made sure the dish was kept hot right up to the point when we'd almost finished the dish. The soup was flavourful with plenty of fishy stock to beef it up, and a good generous helping of pickled mustard to lift the fishy-ness up and give the dish a tangy, more-ish feel. They don't use the usual bee hoon (thin, rice vermicelli) but instead, it's the thicker variety that they put into the dish. Guess it helps ensure that the noodles are not all mush by the time you're through with the hot soup.

We also ordered the Stout Chicken Wings (RM12 per this link) which I didn't know were made with stout when I was eating it. So, trying to describe that taste - the chicken wings were first deep fried until the skin was nice and crispy, before being coated in what I describe as a sweet, sticky sauce which tasted a lot like BBQ-sauce. I really liked this dish, but then again, it's hard not to like a deep fried chicken wing in BBQ sauce dish, isn't it.

I couldn't find much about this dish on the blogs I was searching, and from what I can recall, it was a lamb chop dish served in pretty much the same sauce as what was used in the Stout Chicken Wings dish. It worked well with both meats, as the lamb cutlets were only small ones so the meat was tender with a slight chew (I like it when there is a slight chew).

This was the Sang Cheong (intestines) dish which, in most restaurants, have to be ordered the day before as it's not always available from the markets. Usually stir-fried very briskly over a hot flame, the tiny pieces are cooked with a mixture of chives, dried prawns, garlic and chilli.

I've only been here once and liked the food that was on offer, but as I mentioned previously, if you need variety, then this place doesn't have much of that. However, if you like the dishes I've featured (which make up more than half the menu, I reckon) then this restaurant does them well, so I would recommend you try it out.