Drive For Food - Fantastic Journey of Fantastic 4

Note : Long post with lots of pics ahead....

As some of you are aware, Fantastic 4/ACT (Apple Crumble Team) were picked for the final round of The Star's Drive For Food. The two teams comprising of the four of us; Jackson, Precious Pea, Teckiee and myself had earlier won RM100 each for our video submission in the first round. We have not spent time longer than a few meals together (that's the truth!) and decided to throw caution to the wind at the possibility of spending so much time together and losing our sanity when we travel together. Hahaha.....Well came 3rd Nov, we started our fantastic journey from Kuala Lumpur to Penang with an overnight stay. As it turned out, we not only enjoyed the journey but became closer friends than before. The four of us worked well together and I'm indeed proud to be part of such a wonderful team.

The Star will be posting up the 10 teams video for voting and this contributes 20% of the total points to be awarded. Teams were required to come up with a 3 minute travelogue video - The task was to recommend places to eat (and some places to visit) to a friend who would like to take a leisurely 8 hour drive from KL to Penang. So, with that in mind and a Canon DVD camcorder in hand, we took off at 8:20 am on Saturday from Menara Star with great excitement.

I only have random snapshots of the places we went to and food we ate as we were simply too busy to be taking pictures for our blog and were racing against time. Some we took as backup material whereas after clocking in into our hotel, we had some time to take more photos of our dinner in New Lane, Penang (hence more pics from there). We barely ate enough as it was really a touch and go situation and were hungry most of the time though we made quite a number of food/snacks stops. So, here's a very summarised post on our journey to Penang and my longest post yet (lots of pics!).

Our first stop was at Pan Heong Restaurant in Batu Caves. Read Precious Pea's earlier visit to this place HERE. Pan Heong Restaurant is located at No. 2, Jalan Medan Batu Caves 2, Medan Batu Caves. Contact No : 03-6187 7430. Opening Hours 8.00 am - 3.30 pm.

And what did we have here??? Mee Goreng, delicious Malay style fried noodles. We only had this dish. It was sad to leave here, having just that alone as Pan Heong serves lots of other tasty goodies. Sob! Sob!

At this point, my settings on the camera were wrong and some pics became overexposed. Anyway, one of the stops we made was for Yik Mun's Tanjung Malim pau (steam buns with a variety of fillings). Check out Rasa Rasa's article on this place HERE, located at 6043, Jalan Slim River, 35900 Tanjung Malim, Perak. Contact No : 05-459 6006, Opening Hours : 9.00 am - 9.00pm.

For lunch, we made a stopover at Pun Chun for lunch. I had the Roasted Duck noodles which tasted average. We also tried the Woo Kok (taro puff) and it was excellent. As usual, the four of us gulped down our food here and wish we had more time to savour them. Too bad we didn't have time to make a stop here on the way back or else I would have surely bought some more Woo Kok to take home. Pun Chun is located at 40, Main Road, Bidor. Contact No : 05- 434 1554. Read and see lovely pics from EatingAsia on this place HERE.

We had also made a stop at Aun Kheng Lim on the way but I didn't take photos then. The salt baked chicken from Aun Kheng Lim was simply delicious, the four of us actually devoured the one we ordered on Saturday on the spot! Actually, we were hungry (yet again) at that time too...we were like piranhas and we cleaned the meat off in minutes! The following pics were taken the next day on Sunday when we collected our orders (of course, we just had to get more of these delicious birdies!) on the way back to Kuala Lumpur.

Arriving in Ipoh on the way back on Sunday almost near to closing time, the folks there were still busy packing away orders.

The large modified ovens for baking the chicken, wrapped in layered of what seems to be like tracing paper to me and buried under grains of coarse salt. I'm getting hungry as I'm writing this! hahaha....

You want these birdies? You know the number to call. Aun Kheng Lim is located
at No. 24, Jalan Theater off Jalan Raja Musa Aziz (Anderson Road), Ipoh. Check out a pic of the birdie and other Ipoh goodies from Masak-Masak's post HERE.

Finally, the rush was over when we managed to check into Cititel Penang in time and we headed off to New Lane (Lorong Baru) next to Sunway Hotel, for our dinner. Having more time on our hands, we were glad to be able to sit down and really enjoy our meal here whereas previously, we were rushing through almost everything. Feeling famished, we ordered quite a number of items from the hawker stalls there.

My fave Duck Meat Kway Teow Th'ng (flat noodles with soup). The soup was nice and sweet (I'm not sure whether it's natural or MSG aided as after all these years of eating out, I've become MSG tolerant. Hee Hee...) and with the added bonus of the bits of crispy lard, I finished this bowl almost entirely on my own!

Precious Pea's order of Chee Cheong (intestines!) Porridge. I took a spoonful of it and decided I didn't really like it as it had a smell which I'm not accustomed to :o)

Another one of my fave dish, Har Ko (Prawn Paste) Chee Cheong Fun - Rice Noodle Rolls. I enjoyed the sauce as it was not too strong and the chee cheong fun itself was smooth and the generous amout of sesame seeds sprinkled made it even tastier.

Or chien "Oyster Omelette". Hmmm...I think Oprah would love this double O dish, haha...Well, the oysters here were huge and fresh and the eggs were tasty, a true delight!

Now, this plate of Char Kway Teow (fried flat noodles) may look good with the big prawns and that bit of crabmeat but my tastebuds didn't agree. It lacked the wok hei and tasted rather ordinary, almost unworthy of being tagged as "Penang" Char Kway Teow.

We all enjoyed this mixed plate of Penang Lobak. A mixture of deep fried prawn fritters and meat rolls and century egg; rather tasty eaten with a chilli sauce dip. I recall seeing contestants on Fear Factor USA recoiling in horror as they had their first taste of century egg...LOL! That challenge would have been so easy peasy on us!

Grilled Chicken Wings - if you like it sweet, you'll love this. I quite like this :o)

Popiah - Fresh Spring Rolls with a difference. These beauties were served in a plate soaked with the some clear gravy which I think it's from the cooked turnips; the main ingredient used as a filling. Moist and juicy, we enjoyed each bite of this.

Being full but anticipating hunger later (hahaha...), we decided that we should get something to munch in the hotel as we'll be staying up late, editing our final videos for submission the next afternoon. We settled on one of Penang's well known Apom Manis (sweet pancakes) and bought different varieties back (banana, corn and , sweetened coconut). It was here that I found out that there's also pandan flavoured Apom Manis too!

These banana filled pancakes looked like a "stoned" smiley face without a smile. Hahaha....(Note the greenish colour apom-those are the pandan flavoured ones).

All in all, we love most of the food in Penang and in Ipoh and ...well, practically all the other places we went to along the way (sorry, no pics on those other places). But most of all, we just enjoyed ourselves tremendously (apart from editing the video!) and told ourselves that we should make another trip like this, MINUS the pressure of racing against time so that we can enjoy our food! Here's to our team!!!

Fantastic 4/ACT minus me, someone has to take the photo, right???


Tomorrow is a holiday, looking forward to more rest :o). To my readers who are celebrating Deepavali, may you all have a joyous celebration!


You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job. ~ Laurence J. Peter