Hassan’s Mee Goreng (Mee Bodoh) @ Jalan Tengkera, Melaka

One of my memorable eats in Melaka is Hassan’s Mee Goreng at Jalan Tengkera. Even though this is a Malay eatery, you can see many Chinese and Indian customers enjoying their breakfast here as well, making this a true Malaysian favourite.

The mee goreng is as basic as it could get as it is only prepared with only a handful of ingredients – yellow noodles, bean sprouts and their homemade specialty sambal. Then, a dollop of extra sambal is added on top of the noodles. Because of that the locals also referred this mee goreng as ‘Mee Bodoh’ (translated to ‘Stupid Noodle’) and that name really stuck with me. Anyway, a few years ago the mee goreng here was really cheap and cost only RM1 for a plate. But with the inflation, the price has increased steadily over the years until the RM1.50 now.

Even though the sambal looks red hot, it doesn’t taste as spicy as it seems. Well, at least for me. I actually mixed another extra spoonful of sambal into the noodles later and felt the spiciness was still tolerable.. in fact just right. There are also bottles of vinegar and kicap manis on each table which you can mix into your noodles’ according to your own liking.
I noticed that Malaccans were quite liberal with the vinegar especially, they were literally pouring it over their noodles. Hmm, I guess that’s their way of eating it. As for me, I just dripped a few drops of kicap manis and it was good to go.

Fried eggs are very common in any fried noodle or rice dishes. But there is something special about the fried eggs here – they are fried using chili oil (mixed with sambal I think?) hence the reddish look.

As soon as you secured yourself a table, make a beeline for the fried eggs. Reason being that’s the fastest way to have your noodles delivered to you. Over here, the waiters do not take orders but simply deliver the noodles to whoever has a fried egg in front of them. So don’t be upset or confused if the waiters appear to be ignoring your calls because it is just like that here. If you are wondering, each fried egg is RM0.70 inclusive of the sambal and cucumbers which are pretty much free for your taking.

The normal morning crowd at Hassan’s. As long as you are willing to share a table you won’t need to wait long before you get a seat. Nasi lemak is also available here but you need to be here extra early before they are sold out.

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