Ipoh Bean Sprout Chicken

In a city where food court and food truck meals are now around $ 15, it’s nice to have a food court like Crystal Mall where you can find some authentic hidden gems for around $ 7. Mind you I’ve tried some places in this food court that wasn’t all that great. And not being able to speak/​read any of the Asian languages, it can be an adventure picking a spot to try. This time around I tried Ipoh. Scanning through the pictures on the wall, I picked out the claypot short rice noodle soup with ground pork. It also had a gooey egg on top and I’m a sucker for a gooey egg on top of anything. What came out of the kitchen was a bubbling, sizzling clay pot with the egg freshly cracked on top and still cooking. By the time I made the slow, careful walk to my table, the dish had cooled down to a slow simmer and the egg perfectly cooked and ready to be gooed all over the place. The menu said this was a soup but it was more like a really thick stew. I bought an order of white rice on the side to eat it with. It was delicious, flavorful, nice texture and everything you could want on a cold day. I’m only giving this place a 4 star because I haven’t tried anything else on the menu to be sure it’s a 5 star. Although at this point I’m not sure that I’d try anything else on the menu with how much I loved this clay pot dish.

We just choose a random place in the food court called Ipoh Bean Sprout Chicken. Of course any smart person would have gone for chicken because it’s in the name of their restaurant but I decided to go for the Laksa because I was craving it.
Unfortunately, it just wasn’t that good. It was weak on the flavours. The coconut flavour was lacking and didn’t taste very strong. It wasn’t very salty and lacked depth to it. No curry flavours at all. It was more sweet than anything else. The noodles were also not cooked that great. The vermicelli broke very easily. On the upside the portion was not too small and there was a good amount of fishballs. Presentation was also not bad.

The Crystall Mall Food Court in Burnaby is full of food stands serving primarily Chinese cuisine. What I like about this food court is that you can find different regional Chinese fare here and the prices are very reasonable.
Ipoh Bean Sprout Chicken is the Malaysian food stand at the food court. After a filling breakfast at a HK café, I was looking for a lighter meal and thought Malaysian Chinese fare would be a good option. Meal prices at this stand were good. It seemed like many items were under $ 8. I decided to give the Ipoh fried hor fun ($ 7.25) a try.
Since this is a food court, you will need to find a open table which can be a challenge. It is best to bring someone with you when visiting the the food court here to stake a table while the other person orders and waits for the food.
After my meal was ready, I grabbed it and found a table. Upon opening the box, plenty of steam poured out telling me that the noodles were fresh off the wok. Hor fun is a rice noodle dish that is essentially like Chinese chow funn. I haven’t had Ipoh fried hor fun before, but it seemed like the difference from the Chinese version is the use of shrimp.
The hor fun was good. I noticed the addition of pork in this dish. Not sure if this is traditional, but it is nice to have a second source of protein. The shrimp were not as fresh as in Malaysia, but fine given the low price point of the dish. As for the rice noodles, I thought they were my favorite thing in this dish. The noodles were fresh and the «wok hee» comes through.
There are so many good places at Crystal Mall Food Court that it can be difficult to choose. But if you are looking for a filling meal that is not too heavy, I would recommend the hor fun at this stand.

They served some average food. I tried the Singaporean laksa. Soup base was alright. I can taste a hint of coconut and some heat. I found the toppings to be a bit meager. Not too bad for $ 7.25. I was full from eating noodles.
My mom tried some herbal, slightly bitter tea soup with a side of rice. I cannot recall the name of the item. It has some mushrooms, a couple pieces of tofu puff, a few pieces of pork belly (literally 3 pieces) and some herbs. She was very disappointed with this meal and called it the worse meal she has eaten at this food court. It was mainly soup with very little solid ingredients. She said it tasted nothing like what she has eaten at China. Her soup costed more than mines at $ 7.75. Plus, her meal was basically liquid and rice.
I could barely enjoy my laksa because all I can smell was the herbal concoction my mom was attempting to eat. She ended up drizzling my laksa soup base over her rice to eat something.
Service was fast. I think there are probably some better tasting items on their menu. However, I have had better food at other stalls in this mall so I think it will be awhile before I pay another visit to this place and take a gamble.

The Ipoh Chicken dish is great!
The chicken was tender, juicy and flavourful, without being overly seasoned. The flavours were very delicate, and went very well mixed together with the bean sprouts and cilantro. The rice was on the harder size, to ensure that it wouldn’t get soggy from the sauce. The sauce on the bottom of the rice was a sweet soy sauce, that paired well mixed with the other components of the dish. The cucumbers on the side were a nice touch, and added a refreshing textural component to the meal.
I was pleasantly surprised by the soup that the meal came with. It wasn’t watered down, and tasted as if it had been brewed for hours. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was, but it tasted delicious!

Decent food for a decent price. Unlike some of the other vendors at this food court, the people here are pretty nice at and generous and the food is actually pretty good. The other commenter ridiculed the place for their fried food, and we normally try to stay away from fried food… but e noodle soup and stir fried noodles were pretty good.

It is one of those experiences that I didn’t expect, I thought I was in a safe haven coming to the notorious Crystal Mall food court, I thought that any vendor here couldn’t ruin my experience and expectation, I thought my stomach would leave a happy camper and I would continue to praise everything that has opened shop in this food vendor mecca, and then you showed up! I frequent this food court quite often and was waiting for an opportunity to try this place, I finally got the chance cause my mind said, let’s do this! So while my dear was ordering next door to this vendor I went in for the quick order, the picture looked great (the picture they used to represent their food) and my $ 7.50 was robbed from me for an order of fried chicken nasi lemak.
The wait begins, as I was expecting some tasty to come out of this place, and the wait was long, considering the end result and what came out onto my tray (unless they were catching the chicken live in some farm!) which was nothing like the picture that was promoting the food, talk about bait and switch indeed, I felt I was being swindled. When I brought it back to my table, my partner gave the look of ‘huh’, and it wasn’t the good kind. What was this thing, kind of an over battered KFC wing I got here, nicely plated on my styrofoam plate, in the middle we had coconut rice, on the side we had a half boiled egg (not the sambal I’m used to), some anchovies with nuts (dried, looks like something I can buy in seperate snack packs at my local ethnic mart), some chips that looked like some poor tacos, and some sambal sauce. Remember, when you get this plate, look back at that picture they had on the menu, you will go ‘huh’ too!
So even the food looks ‘so-​so’ how does it taste you ask, my answer is I need a redemption meal, badly, it wasn’t good, not in the least. Let’s get to the main piece, the chicken, this is when mass produced fried bird does taste better, I would have gladly traded anyone for a piece of the Colonel Sanders secret recipe in a heartbeat. The battered skin was over battered where I felt I was eating flour, there was no taste, not in the batter nor the meat, talk about mystery meat, mixed with mystery batter, WTF was I eating? The rice was lightly scented with coconut, and tasted alright, the chips were a little too hard, the sambal sauce was just that, sauce, mix with rice and eat, this was practically junk food served on a plate and eaten with tools, compared to known junk food you just eat with your hands.
If you want that bad egg in the group, then I think I found it, for so much promise of something new in a food court that has many solid contenders serving up some pretty authentic food, this has to be the low point. So much promise, as no one else serves this kind of cuisine anywhere in the mall, yet they have dropped the ball and almost made me think of not returning to the food court, I hope that when you do come to this place, this is not the first experience you have, or you would be scared off. You could have been non-​memorable, but this meal decided to be memorable in that nasty sense where I was looking for the cold coffee I kept in the car to wash the taste out of my mouth. At one moment driving away, I saw the golden arches, and was inclined to clean my palate with this food.

This place is located in the 2^nd floor food court.
Seating was a little challenging as it was a little busy.
Food was quite OK for food court standards.
We had the chicken rice, nasi lemak and fried kwey teow as can be seen by my pics.
I have had better SG and Malaysian food elsewhere though…