Teow Chew Meng Restaurant

I have read quite a bit about this place in the papers and on the Fried Chillies forum but only managed to get to eat it last week once I found out where exactly it was located in SS2. The original shop is located at Prai, Butterworth but they have branches all over Penang, Subang Jaya, SS2 in Petaling Jaya and even one in Indonesia. It's a family business run by a group of siblings continuing their father's legacy.

This Teo Chew restaurant's signature dish is the Mee Sua Tow, where they cook mee sua (a thin longevity noodle) in a seafood based soup that is thickened with potato starch and chock full of seafood like fish, prawns, crab sticks, fish maw and sea asparagus. The ingredients tend to differ a bit for each portion served as I have seen shark fins in someone else's pictures but the portion we got did not have any. It is essential to eat this with some Chinese black vinegar. This dish is said to originate from the Fuchow area in China and was introduced by the founder of this restaurant. We added a bit of the sambal belachan into the soup and it tasted even better with a slight chilli taste to it.



We ordered a Seafood Fried Rice which came with lots of prawns inside it. The rice was very tasty and aromatic. They served this in a metal pot that is also used for the Mee Sua Tow.



Besides that, we also had the Seafood Roll which is like the Penang Lor Bak, a stuffed bean curd skin (Foo Chook in Chinese) roll filled with minced seafood like shrimp, mantis prawns, siakap fishm crab meat and cooked salted egg yolks. Not too bad and they cut up the Lor Bak and fried each cut portion individually making it extra crispy that the normal Lor Bak.



I liked this dish a lot, the Apple Tofu which was made of fried tau kwa (dried tofu) strips, shredded green apples tossed in a Thai chilli sauce with some plum sauce. The dish was sprinkled with some deep fried tiny prawns (Har Mai in Chinese).



This home made Sambal belachan was very nice with the Mee Sua Tow and Fried Rice.



We also ordered one portion of this Teo Chew dessert called Or Nee that is made from yam. They added gingko nuts and cashews on top. It's my first time eating Or Nee but my companions said they have tasted better. The plus point is this version is not that sweet. I suspect they make it ahead and packed in this plastic container. It is then microwaved to heat it up.



Besides these dishes, they also had mango kerabu, seafood porridge using the same stock as the Mee Sua Tow, fresh octopus salad, three taste oyster (sweet, sour and salty), tom yam noodles and clear soup noodles. The place was quite full of people even during the weekday.

Although people rave about the food quite a bit, I thought the food was only okay, nothing that really wowed me or my fellow Hokkien lunch partners. The only dish that I really would not mind coming back for was the apple tofu plus the yummy sambal belachan they served. Another factor to consider would be this kind of food with all the seafood is not cheap as that meal costs four of us approximately RM70.

Teow Chew Meng Restaurant

33 Jalan SS2/30

Petaling Jaya

(The row of shophouses behind New Formosa Restaurant and is the same row as Lobsterman)

Tel: 03 - 78779298

*Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here is entirely based on my personal tastebuds and may vary for others. The reviewer also declares that she has not received any monetary or non-monetary compensation from the restaurant for writing this review.