Jalan Alor

7/206 Bourke St, Melbourne 3000
Date visited: 21 December 2013

MerlinFan and I got up late today and were super lazy and it took us a while to decide where to go for lunch.  We had been through 206 Bourke St centre several times the last few days, so we decided to pay a visit to Jalan Alor.

Jalan Alor is named after a famous eat street in Kuala Lumpur.  Even though I'm from the other end of Malaysia, the decor of the restaurant gave me little waves of nostalgia.

Festive potted plant

The menu came in the form of a clipboard with pages of food, drinks and desserts.  One thing I love best about Malaysian restaurants here is the long list of drinks and teas/ coffees.  I had the cold Teh Tarik and MerlinFan had the cold Kopi-O.

Teh tarik (left), Kopi-o (right)

The drinks got our nods of approval.  My teh tarik (literally, "pulled tea" made out of black tea, condensed milk and evaporated milk) didn't have the froth on top - in fact you could still see the layers so I am 99.99% sure the tea wasn't tarik-ed (pulled) at all.  Whatever.  Tasted great once it was all mixed in.  MerlinFan's Kopi-O (black coffee) brought a smile to my face and suddenly I regretted deciding not to go home for the holidays.  It evoked memories of sitting at our favourite kopi-tiam (coffee shop) back home having char kueh tiaw brekkie and kopi-O/ kopi-C peng (coffee with condensed milk).  I could practically imagine the specks of ground coffee floating around the bottom of the glass like it did back home.

Our food came out amazingly fast, within minutes of our order.  There were a few types of Konloh mee, which is dry sauce noodles - MerlinFan chose the one with minced meat.  

As soon as they brought out MerlinFan's Konloh Mee, I muttered to her, "did they bring out the right dish?"

Konloh Mee

Typically, Konloh mee is made with thin egg noodles which this obviously wasn't, so I was confused.  The minced meat was almost the consistency of paste.  The dark soy sauce was on the sweet side but flavour was nice.  Now, the noodles were chewy and hard - like they had been blanched and left to sit for a long while until they became clumped, which was really unappetising.  I suspect that was the case, seeing that the food came out so quickly and the dish was only lukewarm.

My choice was the Hainanese Chicken Rice.

It was pretty cute how the chicken rice was served up in three mini scoops.  The rice was nice and the soup fragrant, the chilli sauce was hot and limey.  The serve was rather small and the corners of the half of the steamed chicken that I had was a tad dry, as if it were either overcooked or had been sitting there a while.  Granted, the chicken is usually served at room temperature any way, but it would have been nice if they were able to prevent it from drying out.

Overall, not blown away by Jalan Alor but hey, naturally I'm a harsher judge of food from home.  Loved the drinks (it's not everyday a drink brings a smile to my face!) and the flavours of the food were relatively good, but pity everything was a bit dried out.  




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