Lum Choong Kee, Restoran Crab House Kepong, SS23, Petaling Jaya (PJ), Selangor

Address:
42, Jalan SS23/11
47301 Petaling Jaya (PJ),
Selangor

Opening Hours:
7am (?) till 3pm. But currently, it's so popular, it finishes by 12pm. Occasional Tuesdays are off.

Time Visited:
8am on a Sunday morning

Attire worn:
Very very casual (well, to me lah)

Item(s) Ordered (Photos taken as inconspicuous as possible with my phone):
Char Siew Wantan Noodles and some Pork Balls

I stumble upon a friend's conversation on Facebook indicating this place where he went there to try but were told that their Char Siew were sold out even though it's just 9:30am in the morning. This got me intrigued. Is the char siew over here really that good till people flock to this place and it's sold out by 9:30am?

So being a person who had trouble sleeping 8 hours straight, it certainly isn't a problem for me to get up and head over here early especially since this place is so very near my place. So by 8am, I'm already at this restaurant called Kepong Crab House where this hawker stall called Lum Choong Kee was one of it there. Although the name of the place indicates a place to eat crabs, this is true only in the nighttime. By day, the hawker stalls ply their business upon this restaurant. What fascinates me the most at this place is that although it's a Chinese restaurant with hawker stall, over at the back, there's an Indian couple that sells Thosai, roti canai and the likes back there. This is something I rarely see. The other place I can think of is only Restoran Do Re Mi at Ara Damansara but that Indian stall sells Indian rice.

Over at the Lum Choong Kee stall, they've taken over the table beside their stall as a place to manage the orders and their numbering system. LOL. This time around, they left a lady there in charge of the orders and numbering. Anybody that approaches the stall, the lady will immediate ask them to order with her while the two concentrate on preparing the food and one concentrate on serving it. And so I ordered the Char Siew Wantan Noodles and the Pork Balls. I was given a cup that's written a number on it as their numbering system queue. So I sat down nearby to observe them and wait and see how long do I need to wait. I've heard horror stories indicating that someone had waited 1 and a half hours before. Since it's a Sunday where this was my only plan before heading off home to sleep again, I have time to spare to see if this is true.

Since it's just 8am, there's a few empty tables around but even so, there's already quite a crowd at this place. And it does look like that it's true. Lum Choong Kee seems to be the only stall that's crazy busy while the rest await for someone to order. There's a big group of people in the middle who seems to be there for the long haul where they look like they know those people that's running some of the hawker stalls there. It didn't take as long as I've heard for my orders to arrive, just 20 minutes which is okay enough.

So therein lies the burning question in my mind, is the Char Siew here really that good? It does look a bit sloppy on my dish with some char siew just slapped on top of the noodles while the Pork Balls that I ordered were put in a bowl ready for me to consume. Frankly speaking, I did find that the hype of their Char Siew overrated. It does melt in your mouth, yes. But I find that it lacks taste and quite bland. But of course, there are places that I did taste some flavor in it due to the sauce. Other than that, the char siew didn't seem to emit much taste at all for me. But what I can assure is that their Wantan Noodles were unique to me. It did tasted of Bamboo shoots taste which is somewhat a unique taste to me. So the noodles gave me a better impression than their char siew. Finally, the pork balls were not bad too. They were big and large and full of meaty goodness. The pork taste in it is good and succulent. That's something I adored.

As soon as 9am hits, the place started to fill up with more and more people and pretty soon, people had to latch onto the table I was on as well. I had a nice conversation with a mother and daughter on foods nearby. It's been so long since a stranger had strike a conversation with me for a chatter that I grew nervous. So nervous that I keep forgetting names of food places. Oh well. That's what you get for being a loner most of the time. LOL.

After when I was long gone only did I realize that they forgot to give me wantan and I didn't even noticed. So it's not really wantan noodles to me after all. LOL.

Total Wallet Damage:
RM13.50. RM6 for the bowl of pork balls and RM7.50 for the Char Siew Wantan Noodles. Obviously, being a hawker stall, it's devoid of any GST and service charges.

Final Verdict:
5/10. I somehow feel that the Char Siew isn't something that's of my taste but I do like their Bamboo Wantan Noodles. But they still have some major improvement to do in shaving the waiting period for customers. :)