Of innovation

Restaurant Kin Kin
40 Jalan Dewan Sultan Sulaiman 1,
(Off Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman)
Kuala Lumpur

So much of the productivity in the culinary world comes through imitation. Chefs the world over are continually learning from the dishes and techniques of other chefs, or other cuisines. To be sure, specific recipes and formulations are closely guarded, but I can’t think of many other enterprises where the sharing of intellectual property is as unfettered (and as un-priced or unregulated). This imitation is most prevalent in Asian hawker fare, where successful dishes are reverse-engineered and replicated until they become staples of the food scene. I can think of a few examples, like cereal prawns and Marmite pork ribs.

So it is a momentous occasion when that rare innovation occurs in the hawker scene, when someone creates a new dish that is quite unlike any other (and in the process spawning his or her own wave of imitators). A recent trip to KL – a veritable mecca for hawker fare – yielded just such a discovery: chili pan mee (辣椒板面) at Restaurant Kin Kin.

A group of us made the drive up to KL over the long weekend, and tried this place on the recommendation of a couple of locals who were serious foodies. Typically, when word-of-mouth recommendations are passed between foodies – it’s hard to avoid drawing comparisons. These comparisons can be drawn across cuisines (“It’s like a Chinese version of spaghetti bolognaise.”), across dishes (“It’s a mix of Hokkien noodles and char kway teow.”) or in reference to other versions of the same dish (“It’s similar to the one in MacPherson, but they use more sweet sauce for this one.”). However, the person who recommended this place to us was at a loss for comparisons. “I don’t know how to describe it to you”, he said, “Just try it – it’s a life-changing experience.”

So we packed ourselves into two taxis and ventured forth for a late Saturday lunch. Kin Kin is located in one of the last places you would expect to find good food – one in a row of shophouses ranging from auto shops to goodness knows what else, on a sleepy side street off the main drag in the Chow Kit area. As it was a Saturday, most of the other shops along the stretch were closed, and the only hustle of human activity emanated from Kin Kin, making it easy to locate. It was about 3pm in the afternoon – well after normal lunch hours – but the place was still crowded. Surely a good sign.

Kin Kin is a dusty, humid store in a dusty, humid city (the lack of ventilation becomes crucial once you realise that spice – the kind of sweat-inducing, lip-numbing spice – is what makes their signature dish so good). There really isn’t anything you can say about its décor, apart from the fact that the ceramic wall tiles are adorned with messages hand-written in permanent marker. These messages range from proclamations that there are no other (legitimate) branches, to warnings not to even attempt to steal the house-made chili paste. Curiously enough, they are written in a faltering English, which in itself is sometimes hilarious, but must also be taken to mean that this place enjoys a significant tourist clientele (or that tourists are more likely to make off with the chili paste).

When I say that the chili pan mee is a dish unlike any other, I might be exaggerating slightly. 板面, loosely translated as “board noodles” since they refer to flat flour noodles (like fettucine), has come to represent another dish that is typically served in soup, together with minced meat, mushrooms and deep-fried anchovies (ikan bilis). The version at Kin Kin does come with all those ingredients – but is served dry, with the addition of a poached egg on top. The piece de resistance, however, is the loose paste of chili flakes that is placed on each table. What you are supposed to do is to add however much chili you can handle to your bowl, then mix it together with the noodles and other ingredients. The runny yolk of the poached egg helps to incorporate everything, and the end result is something that looks like spaghetti bolognaise.


It tastes completely different, though. The best part of Kin Kin’s chili pan mee, in my opinion, is the noodles. Springy to the bite and cooked to perfection, they belie the fact that all that went into their creation was probably just eggs, flour and water. The other star is, of course, the chili paste. From the dark intense colour of the paste, I expected an overpowering flavour. What I got was something just shy of that – something that still allowed for the subtle tastes of the other ingredients to shine through without overpowering them. Yet the chili still had an intense flavour of its own, a sort of umami that defied description.

There are many things you have to put up with if you want to eat at Kin Kin, where the balance of power is most decidedly not with the customer. You have to wait – a combination of it being always crowded and the production process being slow – up to 30 or 40 minutes for your food. Service is almost non-existent and the staff operate on their own terms – meaning that they will get to you when they can and want to. Then there are the spartan and stuffy surroundings, which do not exactly inspire confidence in their hygiene levels. But these failings, which might be death blows for any other establishment, are only minor inconveniences to be suffered willingly here at Kin Kin. The quality of their product (and the reasonableness of their price) makes everything worthwhile.

On the drive back Laura remarked that after trying this, and other hawker specialties during the trip – she remained unconvinced that KL had the variety of hawker fare to challenge, say, Taiwan. She pointed to a greater variety of foods and snacks in Taiwan, and a greater variety of treatments, as evidence of a more innovative food culture. She may be right, or her allegiances may be due to the fact that she is from there; and I personally haven’t eaten enough in Taiwan to speak intelligently on the subject. Either way I think we can agree to celebrate innovation when we see it, and Kin Kin is certainly a good example.