Keong Kee Herbal Soup 强记补品 Opposite Shaw Parade, Off Jalan Pudu

Street food has always been the best food in Malaysia because it is usually cheap, localized and most importantly delicious. Sometimes I feel I should be covering more of these instead of just visiting the restaurants. As far as KL is concerned I have to admit I have not been adventurous enough therefore missing out a lot of good and affordable makan places. And after trying Keong Kee Herbal Soup in Pudu, this sentiment of mine is even stronger now.
But first, a little background of how I got to know about Keong Kee. You see, besides this food blog I also maintain MamakOnline, a small community forum where we talk just about anything under the sun, usually more on food. So Keong Kee happens to be one of the heavily recommended eating places by one of the forumers from KL nicknamed Moon. To most KLites I believe Keong Kee is probably well known or even old for you. But for a non-local like me, it is one of the most exciting discoveries that I want to share with everyone.

In case you missed the many stacked steamers, Keong Kee is situated just acrosss the street from Shaw Parade. Because of the large tree that shades Keong Kee, they are also referred as ‘the stall under the big tree’ or ‘dai shue tao‘ in Cantonese. If you are coming for dinner I strongly suggest you to come early before the peak hour kicks in, as business is very brisk and it would take a long time before someone finally attends to your order.
Also, if you are a first timer it is also best to send someone to scrutinize the menu imprinted on their signboard. The reason behind this is because the waiters won’t be suggesting those more exotic dishes like flying squirrel, white pigeon, terrapin, bull penis and etc. But if you are not that adventurous in food then nevermind.

One thing that you must try here is the Wild Boar Curry, simply the best I have ever had so far hence highly recommended. For those who have tasted it before will know surely what I am talking about. But for those who haven’t, it is for you to find out because words cannot describe the awesomeness. So you can forget about any wild boar curry that I have mentioned in the past, Keong Kee’s rendition is now the new benchmark.

I don’t know about you but I grew up eating ‘Mui Choy Kao Yuk‘, a Hakka dish cooked by my mom so it is pretty much a very common every day thing to me. Here, they manage to prepare it taste extremely appetizing simply by thickening the soy sauce which also heightens the saltiness slightly. And of course ‘Mui Choy Kao Yuk‘ won’t taste good with lean meat so plenty of thinly sliced three-layer pork are used. Perfect when paired with rice.

Braised Chicken Feet with Mushroom ‘Dong Gu Gai Giok‘ – nice flavor with big, thick and juicy mushrooms but unfortunately paled in comparison with the two dishes shown earlier. In all fairness, they are kinda hard to top because they are just too delicious.

As for the herbal soups sadly I only went for the normal stuff and I can only lament that I did not try the more special ones like pigeon and terrapin. If this is something new for you and you are wondering as well, this ‘Ye Zi Gai‘ (Coconut Herbal Chicken Soup) is quite herby with a hint of bitterness. Well, the main ingredients are herbs and some ginseng anyway. With that being said I still enjoyed it nonetheless since I am not exactly the kind of person who dislikes the taste of Chinese herbs.
Actually we were not meant to get this ‘Ye Zi Gai‘ because the existing supplies ran out. But when we overheard that a fresh batch was being prepared and would be ready by 8pm, we slowed down our eating pace, waited and got it eventually.

A similar but not-so-bitter version of the ‘Ye Zi Gai‘ would be ‘Yok Choy Gai‘ – Herbal Chicken Soup, but minus the coconut. It derives the natural sweetness from the wolfberries and red dates that are boiled together.

Old Cucumber Soup should be one of the most acceptable soups here, another being the lotus roots soup. It might look very light or normal but one sip is all it takes to love this. It is so tasty you will wonder how much MSG is added to achieve that kind of flavor lol. But I believe the MSG level is kept to a minimum as I did not feel any major thirstiness after the meal.

In all, it cost RM58 for the three of us and we were stuffed silly with all the food and soups we had. As you can tell from my writings, I am very happy with the food served here. So, there is no doubt I will return again soon to sample the other things that I missed out. Lastly, the food at Keong Kee finishes very fast therefore it is recommended that you reach here before 6pm when most of the goodies are still available.

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