Banting Traditional Cuisine 萬津古早味 – This Chilli Ban Mian Will Leave You Banting More

You know those places that you instantly fall in love with the moment you take a bite of their food? Banting Traditional Noodles is one of those places for me.

You can get ban mian at almost every food court or coffee shop, but to stand out among the rest is no easy feat. Ban mian is something I get when I’m craving for comfort food, or some piping hot soup on a rainy day. I’ll say it’s a dish that usually can’t go wrong, unless you get undercooked noodles of course, but that’s also the reason why it’s hard to find one that’s exceptionally amazing.

Banting is special because they make almost everything by hand themselves! This means the chillis, noodles, fried shallots and ikan bilis are all done or fried by them right at the stall. You can even see the noodle making in action if you’re lucky!

The stall is around three years old, and is run by a friendly couple from Kuala Lumpur. When they told me that they actually switched lines completely to open up this stall three years ago (the wife had been doing sales), I couldn’t believe my ears! The quality of the noodles was so good that I’d assumed they already had years of experience.

Their specialty is the Hot & Spicy Handmade Noodles ($5), a dry KL-style pan mee that exploded in popularity recently. Each bowl is topped with an egg, fried fish bean curd, three meatballs, anchovies, braised minced meat, and of course, the special chilli. I also got a regular Ban Mian soup with an added egg ($3.50 + $0.50), and Mee Hoon Kueh dry ($3.50).

The ratio of sauce to noodle was perfect, and each strand was coated with the wonderful sweet and spicy goodness. The chilli had a good kick to it, and complemented the slightly braised sauce. The egg yolk was not super runny, but I actually enjoyed taking a mouthful of noodles with the well done yolk (especially when it’s coated in the sauce)! Make sure you get some ikan bilis, which they fry themselves, in too! I’ll say this is officially my favourite dry chilli pan mee now.

Many ban mian stalls use MSG in their soups to add more flavour, but Banting only uses anchovies and some simple seasoning (absolutely no MSG goes into their soup)! The soup tasted extremely clean, and the flavour of anchovies was very pronounced. I wonder how much anchovies they had to use to get it that concentrated. It might be a little overwhelming on its own, but it goes very well with noodles!

On top of the regular offerings, Banting has two special noodle flavours! The first is a special Black Pepper Noodle ($5.50) which combines Japanese, Chinese and Western flavours, and comes with their rendition of chicken yakitori, while the second is a dry Thai-style noodle ($5.50) (only available on Friday and Saturday).

Although I only managed to try their signature dishes on this visit, I’ll be back for more!

MissTamChiak.com made anonymous visit and paid its own meal at the stall featured here.

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