An extremely popular restaurant in Muar Shee Yan (Xi Yan Lou)

The day after I came back from Hanoi, I persuaded a reluctant CEB to spend the weekend in Muar because I was craving the fish eggs dish from my favorite restaurant there. 

 And so, after a heart-stopping incident at the Singapore causeway (the first fuel check I'd been subject to in 3 years ), we found ourselves in what my CEB termed, the "boring little town". Although it was the school holidays and the wedding season, we managed to snag the last superior room with a queen bed in Streetview hotel, 1 of the newer hotels in Muar.

RM98 nett bought us a decent room which was cozy, clean and reeking of disinfectant. The sheets were clean and there was cable (ESPN but not HBO or Star Movies). The toilet was spacious and though nothing close to fancy, pretty fine- nothing like a hot shower and a working toilet. Oh, and there was also free wifi in the room so after we checked in and once the curtains were drawn against the blazing sun outside, my CEB engaged in a meaningful relationship with a bag of chips while watching Japanese movies on his netbook.

We wanted to go out for an early dinner but the carpark was so full that it was hard to get my car out. And so we decided to take a walk instead to the nearby shopping area consisting of The Store and Wetex Parade. We couldn't find a cineplex so we ended up buying groceries (more chips for my CEB to devour) and having a pretty sucky early dinner at the Sushi King. I have to say that the shopping in Muar is really dismal - forget high-street fashion or large high-end departmental stores. However, if one is into nightlife reminiscent of that of Singapore's in the 80s, Jalan Ali in Muar has quite a few roadside hawkers that sell "Muar Chee" (pun intended) and other sort of foodstuff.

My CEB wanted to go to Shee Yan only the next day (Sunday) but I wasn't having any of that after having put so much mileage on my car to get to Muar just for my fish eggs. I'd made reservations at 8.15pm (the lady informed me that they closed at 9pm) and although we reached the restaurant early about 7.30pm, the restaurant was so popular, so crowded that we ended up sitting outside on the bench waiting for a table until 8.30pm.

Now, the assam fish is the restaurant's specialty with every table ordering this dish, and the other dishes may appear to be very simple and ordinary like fish (eg stingray in curry powder) otah, fish eggs, squid, prawns etc but believe me, the otah is to die for with bits of prawns and fish inside. And the fried fish eggs, don't even get me started on those...

As you can prob already tell from the pic below, going to the restaurant for dinner wasn't quite enough for me and the next day found us both back at the restaurant's doors at its opening hours (11.30am on Sunday). We thought we would be the first but there were about 3 families seated already. 1 of them made the mistake of being a smart mouth to the aunty behind the food counter when picking his dishes, and when it was my turn and he'd gone off, she told me she would give him the blackest fish eggs. Hah. Never offend those who have a say in what goes pass your lips!

I, on the other hand, enjoyed one of the best fish eggs dishes which had me closing my eyes in sheer ecstasy at the sweetness and fluffiness of the fish eggs. If I could pack away some of the fish eggs, the way I did with the otah, I certainly would have! But because I can't, you can bet that I am going back to this little heaven on earth as many times as I can!

Oh, and on the way back at the Malaysia side of the causeway about 3+pm, there was a Grassland bus trying to cut into the middle lane from the right lane. And the car behind it and in front of me kept applying the horn to force it to move. It didn't. And so this ah beng with badly dyed yellow hair stuck at his head out and yelled "Oy! (Insert Vulgarities)" at the bus, before turning around to look at me and mouthing what appeared to be reassurances that he would get the bus out of the way. And then he turned right back to yelling "Oy oy" at the bus and after a fashion, the bus did move off. And the Ah Beng turned around and gave me the most beatific smile I'd ever seen before putting his dyed head back in the car and going off. I laughed so hard I cried.

------------------------

Address of Shee Yan Restaurant (Xi Yan Lou)

30 and 31 Jalan Pesta Baru 1

Pusat Perniagaan Pesta Baru

Jln Bakri 84000 Muar, Johor

Tel: 06-953 9014

Hotel D'99 at Muar

A couple of weeks back, I was hit by a really bad craving for fried fish eggs from my favourite restaurant at Muar and so we decided to spend the weekend at Muar with the intention of popping by Melaka. As this was a January weekend, I figured that my favourite hotel in Muar -Streetview Hotel - would have rooms available and didn't bother making any reservations. Unfortunately, I was proved wrong when we tried to get a room about 12+pm and so my CEB suggested that we try one of the hotels that we had driven past called Hotel D'99. Here is a pic of the hotel he took while we were driving back across the bridge from the Giant hypermart.

This hotel is a far different cry from the boutique smallish type of hotel like Streetview Hotel as evidenced by the size of its lobby. The Chinese male receptionist was very fluent in English and most efficient during the check-in process. We were of course delighted that the price of the room was more than affordable at RM113 inclusive of breakfast.

Here is a picture of the room with its queen-sized bed and extremely basic furnishing. There is a safe in the clothes cabinet, a mini-fridge, a water dispenser and a small lcd tv that comes with cable TV. All of these in the room work just fine but the flush of the W.C in the toilet was spoilt.

I wanted to change rooms but my CEB was in favour of staying in the current room because of the river view from the windows per the picture below. The bridge in the pic across the river is the bridge which leads to the highway (Highway 5 and not the NS highway where one has to pay toll) to Melaka. I conceded to him only because he could flush the W.C by pulling something within the system beneath the lid. Like he says, Msia hotels are usually pretty ill-maintained.

Breakfast was on the first floor of the hotel and no surprise what the spread (which was decent enough given the price paid) consisted of - nasi lemak. I suppose this is to cater to the large number of Malay guests staying at the hotel which we had originally assumed was catering to the Chinese crowd because of the KTV/lounge/bar on its 7th floor.

For dinner, we ended up at the Delifrance restaurant in the same building as the hotel. This is the first and only Delifrance Bistro in Johor and it has a surprisingly wide variety of items on its menu ranging from soups to ice-creams. That is my CEB(on his iphone as always) with the Delifrance trademark logo behind him and 1 of their ice-blended drinks in front of him

We both each had a bowl of the lobster bisque which was priced at RM9.90 and let me tell ya, ya can't get lobster bisque soup this good at less than SGD5 per bowl anywhere in Singapore. Although it didn't have that much meat, it was warm, creamy and most satisfying.

I have been on a croissant binge recently and compared to the SGD6.90 I paid for the same croissant from Delifrance across my office, the croissant below only cost RM9.90. However, the chicken did not taste like chicken but more like tuna. The Slog Reviews: 7/10.

My CEB did better than I did with his cheesy baked seafood rice which looked and tasted pretty good.

My CEB and I concurred that Hotel D'99 is a viable alternative to staying at Streetview Hotel so if one is en route to Melaka and needs a place to crash for the night, one can swing by Hotel D'99 at No 173 Jln Abdullah 84000, Muar.

Roadtrip to Yong Peng and Muar

We had intended to go Yong Peng for durians over the weekend and assumed from our past experience driving past the town that accomodation wouldn't be an issue. However, this road trip turned out quite differently from what we had intended.

Firstly, instead of leaving SG early, for some reason, we ended up leaving SG late about 8pm on a Fri night which meant taking the second link or being stuck in the massive jam at Woodlands. We opted for the second link option which was considerably more expensive, stricter on fuel checks on the SG customs side, far stricter on the car check on the Msia side (8 out of 10 cars were stopped and searched) but considerably less crowded. Because of some errands on the other end of JB, we only reached Yong Peng at 9.45pm.

Secondly, we were both tired, grouchy and hungry but because of the lack of number of hotels that looked habitable, accomodation became an issue that had to be settled before dinner. In the end, after cruising up and down the main street, we decided to have a go at one of the shophouses which had the word "Hotel" and a brightly-lit, non-deserted restaurant on the ground level. While my travel companion went up the long flight of narrow dimly lit stairs to the "lobby" of the hotel, I went ahead to the restaurant's restroom and to order the food. The moment I was out of the restroom, he joined me at the restaurant area with a grim look on his face and shaking his head. No surprise - from the state of the restaurant's restroom, I had guessed the standard of the hotel.

Anyway, food. The menu was in Chinese only which meant that I had a limited idea of the dishes and my travel companion decided most of the dishes except for the one below which I thought was unique and insisted on having because I thought we wouldn't be going all the way up to Muar - Muar Otak on a hotplate. As it turned out, this dish served with egg on a hotplate was pretty good. The Slog Reviews: 8/10 if you are an otah and egg lover. I've never had otah on a hotplate before so this dish was quiet a novelty and everyone knows that otah is best served hot so that the spicy flavor of the dish can be brought out.

My travel companion also ordered sambal kangkong, the restaurant's speciality chicken and a bowl of foochow fish maw soup. While the chicken never turned up (the restaurant claimed that we had cancelled it when in fact we hadn't), and the kangkong was ordinary, the foochow soup (see pic below) proved to be quite a disappointment, esp to my travel companion. The gravy was too thick and sweet and the fish maw pretty tasteless unlike the kind of soup which it is supposed to be (at least to be travel companion who had years of eating such soup). The Slog Reviews: 6.5/10. We both were surprised to learn that this was the second most popular restaurant in Yong Peng according to the locals there. Maybe we hadn't ordered the right dishes but I'm not going back there again without any recommendations at all.

From the pic below, if you know me or have been following this blog, you probably can guess what happened to our planned stay at Yong Peng - we ended up in Muar eventually at midnight! The hotel above the restaurant ("Soon Kee") had suggested another hotel to us which they said was the best hotel in Yong Peng and we got there, all the rooms were full except 1 family room which they quoted us RM80 for. I took a look at the room, the dirty grubby bedding, low ugly beds, lack of an ensuite and said no, very firmly. My travel companion had driven almost 2 hours on the highway to Yong Peng and was tired but even he had to agree that we were better off heading for our usual hotel at Muar - Streetview Hotel. The hotel is just behind/around the corner from Townview Hotel and is considerably cleaner and newer. The cost is also reasonable at RM80 and we figured that we would rather spend Rm80 there than the "best" hotel in Yong Peng. I took over the wheel and drove the one hour to Muar where we managed to get rooms at the hotel fortunately.

The next morning (a Sat), we woke up rather early and by 11am, were seated at my favourite restaurant - Shee Yan Restaurant which I have raved about here and here. The young lady boss wasn't around about 11am but her very friendly mum/mum-in-law was (see pic below) and opened the large fridge for us to choose our dishes.

I took the pic below as it is the first time that I've seen the restaurant this empty! Probably it is the hour (11am) and I was right because by 12 noon, all the tables were filled and the young lady boss was behind the counter on the far right.

Pic of the usual dishes which we had for lunch. The Slog Reviews:10/10. The pic doesn't show ALL the dishes though - we had two packets of the Muar Otah in fact! The old lady boss was also reluctant to sell us two packets when we ordered but we assured her we could finish it.

I think I'm starting to like the fried fish eggs more than the assam fish head - I can't seem to get enough of the fried fish eggs (see close up below) which now rank no.1 with my taste buds. Eating too much is not good for the cholestol levels though but ah, these are sweet & crunchy.

So much for not being able to finish 2 packets of otah! We cleaned every single damn plate. I'm now counting down the days till the next time I patronise this place again - less than 2 weeks! :P

Before leaving Muah - lunch at the best restaurant in Muah!

Where we would have lunch the next day after checking out of the hotel was a given. No fight, no contest, no dispute, no other feasible alternatives. Shee Yaan Restaurant (which is stored under the Favs Folder in my GPS) we headed for in an unspoken common understanding. This is a pic of the exterior of the restaurant. Note that the restaurant does not face the main road but is behind the row of shophouses housing Pizza Hut and The Look Hair Salon.

I have to say that the restaurant seems to be immensely popular, not just for dinner but also for lunch. We had to wait for a table and were asked nicely to move twice to smaller tables because there were larger groups (abt 5-10) which arrived later. The young lady boss was not surprised to see us again but her employee was most surprised when we insisted on ordering 2 packets of otah for lunch. She suggested half a packet, we reiterated that we wanted 2 packets and she countered with 1 packet. However, we insisted on having the 2 packets and her eyes grew wider still when we ordered other dishes like fried egg, fish eggs, kangkong and a big slab of fresh fish for the assam fish head. The pic below is of the dishes that arrived first minus the fish.

The assam fish (as per the pic below) came about 10mins later, fresh and tender in a soup so pleasantly warm and sour. I would recommend ordering the fish meat instead of the fish head because the meat is extremely fresh and tender. I think the meat is cooked seperately from the soup because the fish retains its own fresh sweet flavor which provides a thrilling contrast to the sourish soup. The cost of the dish below was RM 17.90 only.

The total cost of the meal below came to RM50.20 (SGD 21 only!!!!). Incredibly cheap for the sheer amount and kind of food. Two of us were more than satisfied (as we should be) after having cleaned every single plate. The assam fish cost RM17.90, the sambal kangkong RM4, the two packets/plates of otah RM16 and the fish eggs RM4.90. Rice was RM0.80 per bowl and can drinks RM1.70 each. I'm not sure if the egg dish was wrongly priced at RM2.40 as it says on the receipt though. The dessert in a bowl (iced longan) was complimentary.

Hand on my heart, I would solemnly declare Shee Yaan restaurant to be one of the best, if not the best restaurant to have a meal at if one goes to, or drives past the little town of Muar. The Slog Reviews: 10/10 for the food. The only thing one needs to be prepared for is the waiting time for a table and the even longer waiting time for the food (15mins) but as is clearly evident from the crowds and the pics, each morsel more than makes up for the waiting time. I'm counting the days till June when we next plan to go back to Muar!

Shee Yaan Restaurant in Muar - the best Assam Fish Head and Muar Otah!

I'm crossing my fingers that I will have a chance tomorrow to eat something that I've been craving for for quite some time (almost a month!). Nope, it isn't the assam fish head below (although this dish will most certainly be ordered too)...

Rather, it's this dish below - Muah Otah! As per my earlier post, I'm absolutely dying to eat this right now and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we will be going to Muar tomorrow! And now that I know I can actually dream and drool over a dish, I probably will buy a lot of this back home to keep in the fridge for a couple of months and for the folks that matter! How can any dish be so simple yet so "orgasmically" delicious? The Slog Reviews: 10/10. The taste, how do I even begin describing that! The blend of fish meat, the right amount of paste and spice - savory, yes, the word is savory. Muah is famous for its otahs but there is no place that serves better otah IMHO.

Here is a pic of the dishes that we always order when we go to this restaurant for lunch/dinner - the assam fishhead, sambal kangkong, fried fish eggs and the muah otah. It is a good thing that we do not reside in Muar or in JB...or maybe it is a bad thing, because I probably would spend most of my free time eating there. The restaurant's setting is simple but it is air-conditioned and clean. There are more dishes of course, other than the ones we always order but because these are so good and Muar is a few hours drive from JB, we always order the same items and never once has the standard fallen. The Slog Reviews for them is of course 10/10. Do drop by this restaurant if you are at Muar but be warned though that the place can get very crowded with huge groups waiting for tables. It is extremely popular, esp among locals. One has to pick some of the food items (the fish head, fish meat, otah and fish eggs) from the fridge next to the cashier. The restaurant's staff are helpful (a mix of local chinese and malay employees) and the waiting time is reasonable - 15mins if the restaurant isn't crowded.


The Address:
30&31 Jln Pesta Baru 1
Pusat Perniagaan Pesta Baru
Jln Bakri, 84000 Muar Johor

Tel No: 06-9539014

Opening Hrs: 10am - 9.30pm

Durian Road Trip to Segamat on 28 June 2009

Durian season in Johor is usually in June and July. Last year, during one of the few weekends I was back in Singapore from the China project, we decided to go on a "road trip" to Segamat which is known to be famous for its durians. As with most Malaysian towns, a structure representing what the town is known for is usually erected prominently near the town center/en route to the town. Segamat is obviously no exception to the rule.

To get to Segamat, one has to drive through Muar and then Tangkak. If one choses to take the North South Highway, one can choose to exit at the Tangkak exit then drive upwards to Segamat. The journey from Singapore to Segamat is about 3+hours assuming there is no jam at the customs. During the durian season, there are plenty of stalls along the road-side where one can pull up and park by the road side to eat and/or buy durians from the durian-sellers. This was the first stall that we stopped at.

Durians, during the durian season, are sold as cheaply as RM2 for one small durian. I didn't try any of those because I figured if I had driven 3 whole hours to get there, it would be more worth my while to have the better quality ones. This is one of the durians we had sold at RM6/kg.

Yeah, that's me holding on to one of nature's great blessings - a thick and creamy durian seed. By the way, one durian seed is estimated to be about 120 calories. Go me, your garden variety food guzzling Singaporean. :D

When entering the town of Segamat, we came across this large impressive-looking temple and decided to stop for some photos.

While I love fishing, I don't like rearing/keeping fishes at all (unless to use as bait for fishing). However, this temple houses an impressive collection of expensive koi fishes. This picture doesn't even begin to capture the number of kois swimming in the temple's ponds. One should definitely stop by this temple if one likes kois. There were white, black, orange and gold kois, some of which had grown to quite an impressive size.

We had dinner at this restaurant Liong Hong located at Segamat. This restaurant is popular among the locals and as was the previous time I was there, the restaurant got pretty crowded about 7+pm. It opens about 6pm in the night.

This is what we had for dinner - the restaurant's signature fried toufu, the omelette, kangkong and a patin fish. Now, everyone knows that most freshwater fishes don't taste very good (taste quite muddy etc) which is why they are sold so cheaply in supermarkets and restaurants (think tilapia etc). However, this restaurant does a superb and in my opinion, unparalleled job of cooking the patin fish which tastes not only fresh and fishy (no muddy taste) but the meat is also so tender, white and just slides off the bones and skin of the fish. And the sauce, the sauce it comes in, that's the kind of sauce one could pour over one's rice and eat it plain. That good, it was. You can't go this restaurant and not ask for a steamed patin as one of your dishes. The Slog reviews: 9/10.

The next day on the way back from Segamat, we decided to go to the little town of Sakil and this is where, I found durian heaven at a family-run stall by the side of the road in front of a fruit-shop. Home-grown XO durians for RM10/kg. When I took one bite of the whitish creamy soft meat which dripped off the seed (not in the too-ripe way) and flowed into my mouth, I swear that I was in ecstasy and life didn't seem all too bad afterall. Hah, yes, one may laugh at my description but then one probably has never felt like one has tasted elixir on earth. And this humble XO durian is my elixir. If I go missing-in-action every single weekend of June, you can be sure that I will be at Sakil gorging myself silly with these durians. It's worth the 6 hours drive up and down, worth the customs jams, worth the weight-gain (erm, kind of).

The durians were so good that I even brought some of them back home in a container. Look, look at the folds of the thin skin, the softness and "creaminess" of the flesh on the seeds. The flesh isn't the firm thick creamy but the oozing milky creamy which floods one's mouth with a slightly pleasant bitter alcohol taste. Typing this makes me want to have a durian right now, but I can't. These durians are only available once a year during June-July unfortunately!
We had a late lunch at our favourite restaurant in Muar. The Slog Reviews: 9/10. Looking at this picture makes me salivate. No, I am not joking. This restaurant is famous for its assam fish head curry and Muar Otah. I'll let the picture below speak for itself. The kangkong is fresh and cooked to just the right texture - not too soggy and not too raw, the otah melts in one's mouth (I am already checking my calendar for a date to drive to Muar) and the last dish of fish eggs which is not shown in the picture is awesome as well. The name of this restaurant is Shee Yan.