SEMENYIH, June 20 — Getting food recommendations and tips can be a double-edged sword. They can introduce you to a hidden gem or disappoint, if you proceed with too high an expectation. Worse, warnings of long queues might put you off visiting the much hailed eatery in the first place.
But fortune favours the bold, as they say. So it was with eager bellies, much hope but also no small amount of scepticism that we approached Restoran Tian Tien Lai in Semenyih. A friend had endorsed the shop for their popular sang nyuk meen or Sabah-style pork noodles.
The same friend had cautioned us to be prepared for a formidable line for tables too. Fortunately, we found the shop only half empty when we visited mid-morning on a weekday. We could see diners already busy tucking into their bowls of soupy sang nyuk meen ; the default order, it would seem.
In Cantonese, sang nyuk translates loosely as "raw meat” but what it refers to here is actually fresh meat rather than frozen. That is the defining feature of this celebrated Sabahan dish — the freshness of the pork used means every slice is bouncy and moist, not dry and tough as you might have encountered at other pork noodle stalls. Other porky ingredients include meatballs, liver, intestines and tendons.
Tian Tien Lai’s sang nyuk meen stands out for the inclusion of greens ( siu bak choy ) and wantan dumplings. Every bowl is meant to be a hearty breakfast or lunch, meant to last you for the rest of the day. We were early enough tha.