Ensconced in a quiet corner of Shoplex Mont Kiara is Fat Fook Inn, a fascinating little eatery if ever there was one. This is a eating place that wears its history like a badge of honor – so that you’ll fast discover the Oriental-fashion work of art and exceedingly Chinese plates bedecking the walls, all right away alluding to the fact (if you hadn’t already sussed it out) that that is actually a Chinese restaurant.
The eatery is administered by Lam Ee Voon, who also owns the sister restaurant Fat Fish next door. Lam was influenced to open Fat Fook Inn after realizing a dearth of first-rate Chinese eating places inside the place.
“I’ve been in this vicinity for approximately four years now because of Fat Fish, and I love Chinese food. And I found that there’s no right Chinese restaurant round right here, so that’s why I stored an eye fixed out to look if there has been a vacant lot to take over,” she says.
Last August, Lam’s dream became authentic when a lot had become had, and the management was responsive to her concept for a real-blue Chinese eatery.
At Fat Fook Inn, there may be no straight-away obvious slant to the Chinese cuisine because it doesn’t hail from any specific Chinese province or region. Instead, Lam trawled through her personal favored Chinese meals and came up with a numerous variety of fare.
“So some humans inquire from me, ‘What kind of cuisine do you concentrate on?’ And basically, we don’t concentrate on any Chinese province’s food because we have a wide variety of stuff we serve right here.
“For instance, we have Hokkien noodles, Cantonese-fashion dishes, Hakka dishes like pigs’ trotter, and we even do a Teochew steamed fish, so it’s a aggregate of every single style of Chinese meals there is,” affirms Lam.
Start your meal here with the marinated shredded hen with jellyfish (RM20). “It sounds very dull, but we use top rate grade jellyfish, and you may flavor the distinction in the feel,” says Lam.
Interestingly, Lam’s family is within the commercial enterprise of offering and distributing dried. Sparkling seafood like fish maw, abalone, and sea cucumber, she is aware of approximately one or two seafood.
The dish is scrumptious – the jellyfish plump with a wonderful wobbly, bouncy excellent to it that mingles amiably with the soft chicken inside the mixture.
Next up, strive for the wok-fried Yue Kwong hor (RM20) or stir-fried flat noodles. The dish arrives with a uncooked egg yolk atop that you’re intended to pierce and slather all around the noodles to create a creamy veneer. The egg offers the noodles a silky texture. It accentuates the dish’s natural attributes, which are full of unctuous slices of pork stomach, plump prawns, and springy squid, all operating together harmoniously. To supply the gastronomic equal of an ebullient rendition of ‘Lean on Me.’
The Hokkien noodles (RM18) additionally packs an outstanding flavor punch with copious amounts of crispy beef lard juxtaposed in opposition to beef stomach, squid, and vegetables. The black sauce in this rendition would possibly perhaps now not be as thick as popular versions of this famed dish. Still, alternatively, you don’t often get Hokkien mee with such generous quantities of red meat lard and different ensemble elements.
If you’re going to be engaging in an expansion of dishes, truely, in reality, eat them all with a serving of red meat lard rice (RM3). This devilish offering is basically rice topped with a sprinkling of crispy beef lard and a residence-made sauce. Tossed together, this apparently simple dish takes on an altogether increased shape and could shape an appropriate canvas to the splendid, hedonistic meal ahead.
From the vegetable options, strive for the stir-fried chives with chestnut mushrooms (RM20) which features crunchy chives against chewy mushroom bits in what proves to be a union of equals.
Sweet and sour pork is so not unusual in Chinese eating places that it’s additionally the dish least possibly to impress locals who’ve attempted numerous versions of the identical antique factor. But at Fat Fook Inn, the sweet and sour beef with pineapples (RM28) is sincerely quite … ideal. The pork has a lovely crunch that offers manner to a tender, almost juicy interior, and the sauce that strains the crevices and hollows of the beef juggles the candy-sour divide with aplomb.
The braised sliced beef stomach with salted fish (RM32) is a factor of beauty that differs slightly from traditional variations. “Normally, the pork stomach is braised together with the salted fish inside the clay pot, however right here, we call it yin-yang because it’s half of braised and 1/2 deep-fried,” says Lam.
When you mix all the substances, you’ll, without delay, stumble on slices of crunchy red meat stomach interspersed with the intensely salty salted fish and fiery dried chilies in what proves to be an addictively accurate compilation of severe flavors.
Perhaps the piece de resistance at Fat Fook Inn is the stewed bird with dried chili and Chinese yellow wine (RM42), which is – to place it mildly – sensationally good. The chook is silken smooth and coated in a sauce with an inherently alcoholic undercurrent walking through it. Each mouthful offers so much euphoria which you’ll stop yourself from making a song – sure, singing – out loud.
Having carried out what she dreamed of, Lam is not stopping right here. Instead, she has her points of interest set on constructing a veritable Chinese eating place empire.
“This is sincerely only a check pilot outlet to gauge the remarks from everybody. So if all is going properly, we hope to begin expansion subsequent 12 months. We’ll start with replicating the eatery, however in larger spaces, then circulate on to an express outlet then hopefully within the subsequent two or 3 years, open a dinner party corridor,” she says determinedly.
But through all this growth and growth, Lam says she will keep making sure that Fat Fook Inn keeps its center identification and cause.
“There is much competition inside the market, but I suppose what units we aside are that having a meal here is like having a meal at domestic,” she says.
I’ve always loved food and I’ve always loved sharing my love of food with the world. This love led me to become a professional foodie, opening my very own restaurant called The Great American Cafe and writing a blog called Foodieso.com, where I’ve been able to share my recipes, ideas and thoughts about food.
