Five spice beef brisket noodles, prepared wantan mee style, in a stroke of brilliance

One of the great things about having visitors is that it forces us to do things that we’ve been meaning to do but get distracted by other, less important activities, such as watching American Idol. (By the way, we never used to watch that show when we were living in the U.S., but here, since Astro Cable runs the current season at the same time as it’s going on in the U.S. but CNN always seems to be half a day behind, I call it “watching the news”).

For months, our Malaysian friends have been imploring us to try the basement food court at Lot 10, a shopping center that we visited our first month here and haven’t returned since, mainly because it was undergoing a huge renovation at the time and smelled like very toxic paint.  The hubby and I are fickle shoppers; conditions must be just so.  But the food court’s been on our list, and every weekend we throw a glance at each other when we’re trying to decide what to eat that basically says, “We should check out Lot 10.”  Then I hear a 7-month old rerun of Late Night With Conan O’Brien blaring through the television, and suddenly we’re up to our old shenanigans at regular spots like the tandoori chicken guys.  Sometimes, it’s more efficient for us to eat what we know is quality rather than putter around experimenting, mainly because I spend a good extra half-hour photographing everything that hits the table and then another 45 minutes or so poking and prodding around to try to figure out what else I can eat.

 Diners at the spiffy new Lot 10 basement food court 

But, with adventurous-minded friends in town, it was the perfect opportunity (or lack of excuses) that led us to our long-awaited meeting with the Lot 10 food court over the weekend.  The first order of good news is that the renovations at Lot 10 are almost complete, so I no longer felt like I was traversing a dangerous construction zone.  Secondly, we discovered a key difference between this place and all the other hawker conglomerates in town: it’s non-halal, which means the Chinese Malaysians can fully express their cuisine by incorporating pork into their dishes.  To the Asian food outsider, this development might seem minor, but it’s hugely important.  There are certain Chinese dishes that simply don’t work without pork.  It’s like me telling you that you can never use peanut butter in anything you make, and then asking you to make me a jelly sandwich.  I might enjoy it, not knowing that anything is missing, but part of you knows that it’s just not right.  You need pork to make it work.

It’s time for your close-up, Mr. Delicious Five-Spice Beef Brisket Noodles

Any first visit to a place with multiple food options is a dizzying endeavor for the hubby and me, and the Lot 10 food court soon proved to be no exception.  We scurried around pointing and gawking at all sorts of dishes before agreeing that one dish absolutely had to be on our list: the five spice beef brisket noodles.  One of the hubby’s favorite dishes made by my papa, who is a master chef, is his Taiwan-style five spice beef noodle soup.  The hubby thinks often about his father-in-law’s soup the way that some people might think about their first love — wistfully, lovingly, and heartwrenchingly, in that time and distance now separate them.

So we saw the description on the menu for a brisket noodle, and I knew we had no choice.  What came to the table, though, was entirely unexpected.  My dad’s version of five-spice beef noodle soup is made with flat, thick flour noodles that hold up to a thick-ish soup with a hint of tomato.  This Lot 10 hawker’s version was reminiscent of a Malaysian wantan mee, which is a noodle served either “dry” (as in stir-fried, with a clear broth on the side) or “wet” (as in a soup, with said clear broth as the base).  The wantan mee usually comes with what we know as wontons (naturally), kailan greens, char siew (roast pork) and thin egg noodles.  The five-spice noodles were the same, except that in lieu of wontons and roast pork, there were deliciously tender braised chunks of beef brisket and soft, springy bits of tendon.  The five-spice was faint but present, and the noodles were a perfect al dente.  For $3 USD, it was hard to beat such a perfect little dish.

Plus, it had the added benefit of soothing my hubby’s aching heart, just a little.

Lot 10 Basement Food Court | Jalan Bukit Bintang | Kuala Lumpur