Every neighborhood should have one: a Chinese restaurant that serves dependably de-lish food.
I'm not talking about food that will knock your socks off, razzle-dazzle, bring on a swoon, or prompt you to swear you've come within an inch of heaven. And I'm certainly not referring to dishes that incorporate rare and expensive ingredients like swallows' spit, diver-caught shellfish, or the navigational/flotational apparatus of some big fish.
What I've got in mind is Chinese tucker, grub,vittles -- simple, home-style dishes that taste like they've been done a thousand times before, tossed in the same wok and stirred with the same spatula, by the same cook. In Kuala Lumpur, you'll find it in Brickfields, at Sin Kee.
This is the place to order that scary staple of American strip-mall Chinese eateries, egg foo yung. It's nothing like the brownish goo-submerged egg puck that was always a component of our Sunday Chinese takeout orders when I was a kid. This egg foo yung is, mysteriously, just an omelette.
But what an omelette! Flash-fried, it's crispy and beautifully browned outside, tender and crowded with small shrimp and slices of Chinese sausage inside. A tad greasy, perhaps (hard to avoid when fatty-but-luscious Chinese sausage is part of the mix), but there's not a droplet of brown goo in sight.
Chinese pork and beans (long beans stir-fried with pork) are flecked with bits of wok char and fragrant black pepper. The saltiness of the thick slices of 'three-story' pork (skin, fat, and meat) is a fine match for hefty chunks of garlic (no dainty dice here); the wrinkled beans bend, yet retain a bit of crunch. The dish arrives in a shallow pool of thin meat juices intermingled with seasonings, just enough to anoint a spoonful or two of rice.
Seafood steamed rice is mom food of the highest order. It arrives at the table as a black-stained bed of fluffy white grains crowned by an inverted plastic bowl. Lift the bowl (top photo) and out tumbles a thoroughly appetizing, black soy-soaked mix of shrimp, squid, fish cake slices, egg, barely wilted head lettuce, and onion.
If presentation were everything this dish would already be a winner. Happily, flavors live up to the visual come-on. The seafood's unmistakably fresh, the onions soft and caramelly, lettuce barely wilted. All are complemented by the soy's light sweetness. Forget futzing about with chopsticks; you'll want to use a big spoon with this one.
The menu at Sin Kee isn't more than a page long, but it looks promising. In addition to various steamed and fried rices and your standard pork-and-X stir-frieds, there are a few preparations of whole fish. Noodles can be had as well. A fine Chinese joint if ever there was one.
Restoran Sin Kee, Jalan Tun Sambanthan (about 2 blocks from the monorail station, turn left as you exit), Brickfields, KL. Closed Mondays.
thats a beautiful dish Robyn.....been there ages ago and havent been back yet. BTW, the 3 storeys pork is called streaky pork ler....
Posted by: foodcrazee | 2006.03.23 at 18:06
The photos make me want to rush out to my own dependable Chinese joint (of course probably much more Americanized, but tasty in its own way).
Posted by: kalyn | 2006.03.23 at 22:59
How much was the bowl of rice over the plate? When I was last the 6 years ago it was RM6.00. It was the most popular quick lunch for the working men frequenting the restaurant.
Sin Kee used to be on the other side of the road but they moved because of the KL Sentral development, I think. All their other dishes are equally yummy at reasonable prices. And their dishes are like home-cooked food! Yum!
Posted by: bayi | 2006.03.26 at 22:12