Kuala Lumpur - Incredibly Spicy Noodles from Kin Kin Chili Pan Mee (建記辣椒板麵)

[klyeoh]

KL has always had its fair share of "pan mee", freshly-kneaded and hand-cut noodles, for as long as anyone could remember. But Kin Kin, so I heard, was the first "pan mee" purveyor who came up with this method of serving "pan mee": serving it dry, drizzled with pork lard, sesame oil & soysauce, but with the addition of a very special tongue-numbing dried-chilli-lardon spice mix that will guarantee to blow your palate. Minced pork and ultra-crisp anchovies ("ikan bilis") provided additional taste & textural dimensions.

The piece de resistance: a poached egg on top of your noodles, which you'll be reminded (by the owner-chef) to prick, letting the runny yolk to flow down & coat the hot noodles, giving it a richness which ever so slightly counter-balanced the lethal heat from the chilli condiment.

The noodles will be accompanied by a small bowl of clear consomme - blandish, "ikan bilis"-flavored, with strands of egg-white ribbons and a generous amount of "daun cekur manis" (oval-shaped leaves from the sweet-leaf bush) floating in it.

Kin Kin's creation has been replicated by numerous copycats since then, not least their closest rival: Super Kitchen right across the road, and which I'd blogged about before:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/799298

Given a choice - come to Kin Kin, theirs had that extra X-factor: tastier, finer, with an elusive "umami" effect.

Address details
=============
Restoran Kin Kin
40 Jalan Dewan Sultan Sulaiman 1
Off Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman
Chow Kit
50300 Kuala Lumpur

[justintime]

Sigh... Great dish and impossible to replicate. My husband worked on a project around the corner for a few months. Kin kin was reason enough to visit him in KL!

[huiray]

Hmm, looks very tasty and tongue destroying. I don't remember this dish specifically, but the soup you describe is familiar. "Soup leaves" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauropus... ) can be found in large Chinatowns here, of course, and in fact a few months ago I hauled back home from NYC an armful of the branches and made a memory-lane-inducing pot of soup with the leaves. :-)

[klyeoh]

Wow, huiray, you can find "daun cekur manis" in New York?! I never even *knew* about the existence of this particular variety of edible greens until I first encountered it in Super Kitchen (Kin Kin's deadly rival) a few months back. The owner even kindly offered to show me into his kitchen and let me take photos of the bunches of leaves on one of the kitchen tables! Maybe he sensed my curiousity as I certainly did NOT dare ask to see his kitchen!

[micheniche]

not my favorite place to go. the lady boss is horrible. Treated my entire family like crap. And i got msg bombed after my meal. :(

[klyeoh]

That's bad - you're talking about Super Kitchen, right? Must be the "Pan Mee Nazi Lady" you ran into.

Kin Kin is fronted by an afffable old man and his middle-aged brother/son.

Speaking of msg, that probably explained why I felt so thirsty and a bit out of sorts afterwards. But I'd had really BAD msg reaction after my meal at the popular Ippudo Japanese ramen-tei in Singapore, and I do mean *bad*.

[huiray]

Ippudo must have really dumped a vast amount of msg in to your food - but are you sure you have a reaction to msg; or is it a reaction to impurities in the msg they used; or to something else used alongside msg? I'm sure you are aware of the vast amount of stuff/debate (even on CH) about msg....
:-)

[klyeoh]

I'm not sure now, actually - it's just that both me & a colleague who lunched there felt queasy after the meal: cold sweat, headache. Which was a pity because the meal was tasty - some of the best buta-no-kakuni and ramen outside of Japan. Maybe it was something else, but we blamed it on the poor "ajinomoto"!

But you're right - I'd been to Japan 10 times (sometimes staying up to a month) and Chinese cities like Beijing/Shanghai/Guangzhou more than a dozen times in the past decade, but don't remember ever having any msg reaction in both countries - and you know what they say about Mainland Chinese/Japanese chefs & msg: you're supposed to experience the motherlode there :-D

[mikey8811]

This would be one of the best Pan Mee in KL. It's good without the chilli too. If you like runny yolks or the meat "sauce" you can ask for more at an additional cost but it can be too much of a good thing.

[klyeoh]

I'm glad I ran into Kin Kin, mikey. I actually went down to that area for Songkhla, a stall which specialized in Kelantanese cuisine (laksam, nasi kerabu, nasi dagang, etc) but it was not open, so I went to Kin Kin instead. No regrets there :-)

[micheniche]

Many of my friends, especially Singaporeans, do get a reaction from MSG laden meals. Especially restaurants that use low grade MSG. My mom and I are both sensitive to MSG as opposed to my dad and sis, so it's a good experiment going on there (Manipulated and control).

My mom used to work as a waitress and she learnt from the kitchens that different restaurants use different grade of MSG. There are some which are imported from Japan and some are made in China. If you get a reaction, there is a high chance that the restaurant is using low grade stuff. :)

[huiray]

What you claim is consistent with the notion that you and your friends do not have a reaction to msg. Rather, they may have a reaction to the *impurities* in a low-grade batch of msg, NOT to the msg itself.

[micheniche]

ah i get it now!

[micheniche]

ah, okay, i get what you mean now. sorry.

[micheniche]

No i'm talking about kin kin.

[klyeoh]

Tough neighborhood - Chow Kit. I was lucky as there were only 2 older men at Kin Kin taking orders and receiving payments on the evening I was there. The sole woman was a young Indonesian or Myanmar who prepared the food.

Super Kitchen had a severe-looking woman who looked very impatient when I was there (with 9-10 office colleagues) because some in our party couldn't make up their mind on what to order. She went off in a huff, and only returned 10 minutes later. Who knows - she could be related to Kin Kin's lady :-)

[micheniche]

actually, most famous pan mee stalls in kl seem to have severe characters!

[huiray]

I picked up some "Kau kei Choy" (枸杞菜) a.k.a. Wolfberry leaves for soup today at my local Chinese grocery. It has been quite a while since I saw this veggie. Similar in a sort-of general appearance to "daun cekur manis" but it is a different plant (see, e.g. http://www.caipuku.com/html/shicaitupian/200811/25-581.html) (http://translate.google.com/translate...)

Preparing to make fish ball soup with these leaves and a beaten egg stirred in...

(I am presuming that the "daun cekur manis" soup you had was really that and not "Kau Kei Choy")

[huiray]

Pic of the "leaves".

[klyeoh]

Yup, the other type of leaves came in large bunches. I wished I'd photographed it in the kitchens of Restoran Super Kitchen when I was showed them by the owner.