On a recent trip back home to Kota Kinabalu, my parents took me to one of their favourite coffeeshops for brunch. Located in a shop lot in Damai, H&H Kopitiam serves really good Yong Tau Foo or stuffed tofu and vegetables. One of my favourite Malaysian-Chinese dishes, Yong Tau Foo is usually served for breakfast or lunch together with noodles or can be eaten on their own.
The exterior of H&H Kopitiam - nothing too fancy but the food speaks for everything else! The case to the left contains steamed pork and chicken buns which I didn't get to sample unfortunately!
Armed with my giant Nikon, the shopkeeper thought I was from the local council checking up on her establishment when I started taking photos around her shop! She relaxed abit when I told her I was just genuinely there for the food… To be honest, even if I was from the council, I wouldn’t be worrying too much as the level of hygiene at H&H Kopitiam is pretty good.
The little unit where they prepare the noodle soup dishes. One vat contains a clear fish broth while the other one has the curry soup.
The menu at H&H is very straightforward – you can either have dry or soup noodles ranging from vermicelli, egg and flat rice noodles together with their selection of stuffed tofu and vegetables. They have two kinds of soup; a clear fish broth and a spicy curry. You can opt to have a combination soup with all the toppings, or you can pick your own selection from their glass display.
vTheir simple, uncomplicated menu!
They have quite a wide variety of veges and tofu that are stuffed with finely minced fish meat. The stuffed veges on display are eggplant, bittergourd, chilli and okra. The quality of the food at H&H is pretty decent – all the veges and tofu are cut in generous sizes and taste fresh.
An array of stuffed tofu, bittergourd, eggplant, chilli, okra, fishcakes, fishballs, and deep fried crispy tofu.
Besides stuffed veges, they also have fishcakes, fishballs and deep fried crispy tofu. You can actually pick the number of items to go in your soup and they will charge you by item. If you’re just after a light snack, you can just order the stuffed veges and tofu without any soup or noodles.
You can select whatever you want on display to go in your noodle dish.
Their most popular dish is the special curry as was recommended to me by a few people. Being a fan of all things spicy, I ordered one of these with a combination of stuffed eggplant, bitter melon, chilli, tofu and fishcakes with a serving of flat rice noodles. However, when the bowl arrived I noticed that the portion was quite small compared to alot of other noodle soup restaurants around town.
Special Curry with Flat Rice Noodles, Stuffed Eggplant, Chilli, Bittermelon, Fishcakes and Tofu.
The special curry soup was very tasty but I found it too oily, as you can see in the photos. There literally was a thick layer of oil on the top and to get to everything else in the bottom of the bowl one had no choice but to drink the oil too! The oil is from the coconut milk they use in the curry soup base. As it gets cooked, coconut milk slowly unleashes all its fatty goodness upon its bowl-mates!
Special Curry with Egg Noodles and a combination of fish cakes and stuffed veges.
This is probably the first time I have eaten a curry soup like this in Kota Kinabalu. The other curry soups I have tried were either Laksa or Tom Yum whereas the H&H Curry Soup had a very stong curry leaf flavour to it and wasn’t sour like Tom Yum. Despite being too oily, it was still delicious and I would definitely be going back to H&H to try the other dishes on offer. Meals here are very cheap and range from RM4-7.
Nasi Warung – meaning ‘stall rice’, is a very popular lunch dish in Malaysia and consists of a huge variety of curries, meat, fish and vegetables. It’s like a buffet, but isn’t an ‘all-you-can-eat’ setting. You get a plate of hot rice, and your choice of side dishes. Each side dish is priced differently depending on how much you pile onto your plate! Nasi Warung can be found in street corners, coffee shops and even in shopping malls.
The term ‘stall rice’ means food that is usually sold from a street food vendor at their food stall. In the above picture I can pick out beef liver curry, deep fried fish heads, tuna curry, prawn sambal, eggplant sambal and stir-fried water spinach in garlic.
The Centrepoint Shopping Mall in Kota Kinabalu has a food basement level with a few Nasi Warung eateries. All dishes are prepared in the morning and kept hot throughout lunchtime. It’s one of my favourite meals to have because of the variety and flavours you can get just on one plate. Sometimes when dining with friends or family, it becomes a competition on who can pile the most food on their plate (and finish it).
More choices at a neighbouring stall – Pumpkin curry, spicy fish cakes and crispy skin prawns are amongst the food on display here.
There are literally HUNDREDS of different dishes to choose from, and one can never get tired of eating Nasi Warung on a daily basis. It will probably take many years to actually try ALL the Nasi Warung dishes in Malaysia. Many of these dishes are traditionally Malay, but there are also alot of Indonesian-inspired cooking styles as well. Chillies and curry spices make up the majority of flavours in most dishes as well as an abundant use of coconut milk in the curries.
Stir-fried beansprouts, fried cucumbers, grilled fish and vegetable curries cooked in aromatic spices and coconut milk.
Nasi Warung is a smorgasbord of bizarre and rare ingredients – Animal parts and strange plants aren’t spared either, everything from chicken hearts, chicken feet, beef liver, giblets, squid ink, fish roe, banana heart, ferns and pumpkin shoots are used to create an array of sensational dishes. One is always spoilt for choice when it comes to selecting food that will only fit on one plate! Sometimes I linger too long around the food deciding what to eat, much to the annoyance of other patrons in line.
Help! Where does one even begin? Check out the large dish of steamed Okra and Angle Beans.
There are around 5-6 different Nasi Warung restaurants in the basement of Centrepoint Shopping Mall. Picking one to eat in is a task in itself, let alone deciding what food to have. If you want to experience good Malay cuisine, paying one of these eateries a visit is a must. You’ll be blown away by the array of food and cooking styles – Also, you’ll get to savour many types of dishes providing you bring a few people along so you can share your meals.
A closer inspection at my lunch above: Clockwise from left: Beef Rendang, stir-fried cakur manis with garlic, spicy green beans, a piece of grilled stingray, ferns in sambal and spicy bamboo shoot cooked in coconut milk. The greyish-looking plant matter in the picture below is banana heart.
My plate of Nasi Warung which had 6 different servings of food cost a measly RM6, which comes up to around $2. For that amount of food for so little money, it’s definitely a bang for your buck especially if you’re travelling on a shoe-string budget. This really is a satisfying meal plus you get your daily intake of meat, carbs and vegetables all at once!
