Kuching: Kolo Mee & Sarawak Laksa

As usual, I did a whole lot of research as to where I can find good kolo mee & sarawak laksa.  Given that we do not have a car to go around, we decided to stick to places right in the city.

After long hours of going through blogs, we finally decided to test out 2 coffee-shops:

A)  Choon Choon Cafe @ Abell Road (Same row as AirAsia office)

B)  Choon Hui Cafe @ Ban Hock Road (Beside grand Continental Hotel)

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Kolo Mee

i)  Choon Choon Cafe

I prefer the kolo mee here as it is not too dry.  If you lift the noodles high up, you still can see the sauce remaining on the bowl.  In terms of flavour, Choon Choon offers better kolo mee.  The only thing I didn't enjoy was that the char siew was a bit bland.

ii)  Choon Hui Cafe

Although Choon Hui's kolo mee is not as wet as Choon Choon, but it was still enjoyable.  If you like the noodles springy (feels like instant noodle texture), then you will like the kolo mee here.  The minced meat is very nice & it goes very well with the noodles.

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Sarawak Laksa

i)  Choon Choon Cafe

Somehow, I felt that the soup lack the kick (I could have been biased as I tried the Choon Hui's first).  It is more to prawn soup & less of the curry side.  As shown in the picture, it was missing the egg omelette. Overall, I find it okay.

ii)  Choon Hui Cafe

If you are a big fan of Maggi Curry, you'll bound to love Choon Hui's Sarawak laksa.  The soup is just right - not too salty, not too spicy.  The balance between the curry & the prawn soup is just nice.  I love the pieces of egg omelette - reminded me of how my mum used to prepare my Maggi noodles for breakfast.  I finished every drop of the soup.  My vote goes to Choon Hui!

(You will notice that both the Sarawak laksa I ordered were missing its main ingredients - prawn.  Well, I deliberately omitted them as I don't really eat prawns.  BTW, I found that both stalls serve huge prawns)

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The coffee-shops also serve other food.  Some of the highlights:

Three Layer Tea - black tea served with layers of palm sugar (gula melaka) and milk

The picture on the left is the three layer tea from Choon Hui.  Between the two coffee-shops, both KS and I felt that Choon Hui tasted nicer as there is more palm sugar.  The palm sugar gave a very nice fragrance & sweetness to the tea.

But a selling point of Choon Choon is that you can order really huge drinks - standard, medium & large.

Toasted bread

Choon Choon has really nice toasted bread.  It may be a simple dish but it is super nice.

I think no one mentioned about this in any blogs I read, but we noticed many people ordered it, so we thought, maybe we should order too. 

They have a variety of toppings, but KS ordered the simplest - toasted bread with butter and honey.  Wow!  The bread is toasted to the right crispiness.  This is really a hidden gem!

Popiah

The popiah at Choon Hui is just average.  But the dipping sauce is quite nice and goes quite well with the popiah.  A good snack on top of the noodles.