Best Curry Puff from Singapore on Old Klang Road?

Just a quick toe-dip back into the scheme of things:

We were drifting by Bloom Season Bakery at Scott Garden on Old Klang Road after a particularly underwhelming breakfast at Lorong Seratus Tahun when this caught my eye:

Tip Top's claim of offering the best chicken curry puff from Singapore got me all hot and bothered. The average Malaysian would know the feeling - that instant biological reaction to the combination of the words "Best" and "Curry Puff" only savoury curry filling encased in a greasy flaky pocket can mollify. In we went...

The puff came piping hot out from the kitchen (as it was barely 11AM) and certainly very impressive in size. But upon the first bite, the filling punctured my pastry craving, a blow to the gut. Overpowering with curry-powder and not much else. Even the generous quarter of hard-boiled egg failed to lift the package from the league of highway rest stop curry puffs.

Best Curry Puff from Singapore on Old Klang Road? I don't think so!! Keep looking, folks!

Tip Top The Puff Factory

Bloom Season Bakery

Ground Floor (next to Lorong Seratus Tahun)

289 Old Klang Road

58000 Kuala Lumpur

Chicken pies from KSB Specialist Bakery & Cafe, Macalister Road, Penang

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about longing for pies minus the puff pastry. So imagine my utter delight when I chanced upon exactly some of those today.

Disgruntled and soured after the lunch at Lynn's, I decided to hang out with Mei Shean while she waited for an appointment on Macalister Road. We had about 20 minutes to kill and thought we could really use a seat and some coffee and voila, about ten feet away from us stood the highly inconspicuous KSB Specialist Bakery & Cafe. We wandered in and ordered ourselves two cups of freshly brewed coffee at RM3.60 each. They came in steaming mugs, so strong and virile they more or less made up for the disgrace that was Lynn's coffee earlier.

We deduced that it's the same bakery that started at the lobby of Loh Guan Lye Specialist Centre and it's branched out to a stand-alone outlet now. Apart from the usual array of preservative-free health bread and buns, they also sold toasted sandwiches, mushroom soup and gasp! a variety of pies with short crust pastry! The selections include chicken, curry chicken, black pepper, sheperd and vegetarian. They also accept bulk pre-orders for a rather impressive-looking Yorkshire pie. We both took away two pies each - I took home chicken and sheperd (which we learned was also chicken).

And the verdict, come dinnertime?

Apart from the crust, a noteworthy and welcomed change from the puff pastry madness which has enveloped our deluded nation of pie makers, I have to say the filling was.... more of the same. At RM3 each, they were still very tasty treats but I was kinda expecting the filling to be some gooey, gravy explosion and they turned out to be the rather standard potato-chicken-egg variety.

Sheperd's Pie - potatoes, chicken, hard boiled egg, peas, carrots, corn



Chicken Pie - essentially the same thing as Sheperd's Pie, but of lighter colouring?



A closer look at the filling contrast - Sheperd's on the left, Chicken on the right. They really did taste the same, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Dinner at Chulia Street

The Loaf window display at Rainforest Bakery, Chulia Street. Quality Baked Goods.
Illustrations of Quality Baked Goods at the Rainforest Cafe
Chulia Street Char Koay Teow: The Expert-Maker is now in semi-retirement and opens irregularly at irregular times. So it was extremely fortuitous we manage to catch him in action. Papa Chow was so overcome with glee he immediately ordered three plates of Char Koay Teow for each of us without prior consultation. This miffed Mama Chow at first, but she understood the rareness of this opportunity. It just had to be done.
Also forces to be reckoned with, the Wan Tan Mee stall & the Curry Mee stall. There are two Wan Tan Mee stalls in close proximity: Mama Chow likes both.
I love the lop-sided placement; it's a good indication of the speed and wild, mad, frenetic energy of the fryer: I love its urgency.