By SH Yong our Guest Reviewer
If there’s one Chinese dish I’d shy away from, it would be lei cha, that ever-present Hakka cuisine that combines green tea broth with rice accompanied with finely chopped condiments.
I’d always feel queasy about the “green and minty” taste whenever I’m invited to partake. And I had often eaten grudgingly just to please my inviters as the green coloured broth always gave me a sort of “uncooked” feeling.
After having dodged numerous invitations to lei cha in recent years, I was recently cornered into one. This time it was to Big Bowl Hakka Kitchen at Desa Aman Puri, a rather popular dining enclave in Kepong.
Cannot be More Honest than This!
I must say that I had a pleasant feeling this time. There was no running away or cooking up a white lie as to why I’m not into lei cha. Either my tongue was deceiving my brain or the lei cha was really flavourful: but I think it was the latter.
And I found out why later when the pretty and innovative 30-something proprietor, Angie Lim, revealed that she uses a lot of basil leaves in the green broth! Some 20 kg of basil are used each day and mixed with other delicious stuff.
No wonder and that explains why I didn’t shun the dish. And the remarkable thing was that I even went for a second helping!
Aficionados of lei cha often wax lyrical about the goodness of the dish, especially its nutritional and “cleansing” attributes. And they go to great lengths to find restaurants that serve good lei cha.
The secret behind Angie’s lei cha broth is that it's freshly prepared where each bowl features a mixture of mint, basil, sesame seeds, peanuts and homegrown herbs. The broth is paired with eight types of finely-chopped vegetables and other tasty condiments to be served with brown or white rice.
The restaurant’s super lei cha broth is also expertly fused with its home-made noodles to produce lei cha noodles, which are soft and delicious. To the untrained eye, it would seem that one is eating savoury cendol! But they are something to try for if noodles are your cup of tea.
There is More than Lei Cha Here
In addition to producing top-quality lei cha stuff in the last 15 years at Desa Aman Puri, Big Bowl Hakka Kitchen also serves other yummy dishes like Kampung Chicken With Black Fungus Stewed in Homemade Rice Wine, pork leg in vinegar and yong tau foo, to name a few.
The restaurant is actually an amalgamation of a food stall belonging to Angie's mum somewhere in the same vicinity and Angie’s ambition to take their culinary skills several steps higher. In this, they have succeeded as Big Bowl Hakka Kitchen has stood the test of time and other challenges over the last 15 years.
The attractiveness about dining at Big Bowl Hakka Kitchen is the authentic home-cooked flavours of its various dishes. They don’t have a hint of over-commercialisation. It’s like being invited to a Hakka friend’s house! Or in this case, to Angie’s house, which also has ample parking to boot!
Restoran Big Big Bowl Hakka Kitchen
Address: No 5A Jalan Desa 2/7, Desa Aman Puri, Kepong, 52100 Kuala Lumpur.
Tel: 012-211 5564
Operating hours: 9.00 am – 8.00 pm (7.30pm last call) through the week, off only on alternate (second and fourth) Tuesdays of the month.
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