Must Try Local Dishes in Ipoh

Part of the Ipoh travel guide — see every topic in All Ipoh Guides.

Ipoh has a reputation among Malaysians as one of the country's great food cities, and the reason is partly geological. The Kinta Valley's water is filtered through limestone, and Ipoh bean sprouts — nga choi — grow short, fat and crisp in a way they do not elsewhere, to the point that the city's signature dish is essentially a bean sprout dish with chicken attached. Around that sits a Cantonese-heavy food culture of noodles, dim sum, salted chicken and a peculiar local dessert tradition.

Bean sprout chicken

Nga choi kai, or tauge ayam: poached chicken, sliced and dressed with sesame oil and light soy, served alongside a plate of blanched bean sprouts and a bowl of hor fun noodles in clear broth. It sounds unremarkable and is not: the sprouts are the point, plump and audibly crisp, and the chicken is poached with real care. Lou Wong and Onn Kee, facing each other on Jalan Yau Tet Shin, are the two famous addresses and have competed for decades. It is eaten at lunch and dinner and costs 15–30 ringgit a head.

The noodles

Kai see hor fun is Ipoh's noodle dish: flat rice noodles in a clear broth made from chicken and prawn shells, topped with shredded poached chicken, prawns and chives. It is delicate rather than rich and is a completely different proposition from the fried hor fun elsewhere in Malaysia. Curry mee here uses a lighter coconut broth than Penang's. Chee cheong fun, rice noodle rolls, come with a distinctive sweet-and-savoury sauce and pickled green chilli. Almost all are 8–18 ringgit.

Salt-baked chicken and the rest

Ayam garam — whole chicken wrapped in paper and baked buried in coarse salt, a Hakka technique — is an Ipoh speciality sold from shops that do little else; Aun Kheng Lim is the best known and sells out. Yong tau foo, tofu and vegetables stuffed with fish paste, is strong here. Sar hor fun, pomfret and Cantonese roast meats fill in. And Tanjung Tualang, half an hour south, is famous for enormous freshwater prawns raised in old tin-mining pools.

Sweet things

Ipoh's dessert tradition is unusual. Caramel custard — a set egg custard with caramel, sold in small metal cups from coffee shops — is a local fixation with no obvious explanation, and Funny Mountain soya beancurd, sold from a shop that has done nothing else since 1950 and closes when it sells out, generates a queue every afternoon. Kaya puff from Sin Eng Heong, heong peang biscuits, and Ipoh pomelo — the enormous citrus grown in the valley — complete the list of things people carry home.

Must Try Local Dishes at a glance

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