Trip to Hatyai,Oct 2011 - Food in Hatyai (Part 1of 2)

As promised, here's on food in Hatyai! (Part 1 of 2)

Venue: Kan-eng Restaurant, Hatyai
Overall comment: One of the best & perhaps most famous "Chinese-Thai style" restaurants in Hatyai. It's affordable, tasty, & easily located. Most "tuk tuk" drivers will know how to get here when you mention the restaurant's name; we walked here from our hotel though :D
Halal: No

Total bill = RM70.00 or THB700

Thailand is famous for their tom yam, or at least that's what I believe. We've spent the whole day in Hatyai eating food that wasn't to our expectations; unappetizing food made us long to head back to Malaysia for some proper meal! Talk about complacency & comfort zone.

Here at Kan-eng, we definitely ordered the Tom Yam, which was actually quite good. It wasn't overly spicy 'til the tongue goes too numb to taste other dishes, nor was it too sour, making your whole face cringe up.

Here's something that we ordered "wrongly". I think we were supposed to order the Chicken Feet Kerabu, but we ended up ordering the Mango Kerabu, which was not too bad as well. It didn't have that "crunchy" chicken feet texture, but it had the fresh, crisp of sourish green mangoes. Oh, the bits of fried 'fish' gave the dish a good blend of sweet-salty taste to the sourish mango dish - appetizing :)

Yet another mistake...hahaha...yes, much trial & error during our short trip. We ordered stir-fried paku-pakis with belacan, but this dish came instead. It felt like pumpkin leaves! Not that we've had such a "vegetable" before, but it did look similar. In the end, we found out that this dish is called the "Chiangmai Vegetable"....okaaay...something new for PerutBesi....

All around town, I saw stalls selling fried oysters omelette. Being a great fan of "or chien", I just had to try out the Fried Oysters Omelette here. It wasn't up to my expectation. I still like the one in Puchong - Everyday Foodcourt. Oysters weren't very large & the egg omelette tasted nothing spectacular.

This was one of the best dishes apart from the tom yam - Thai Green Curry. We were served a generous portion of chicken, yam sticks, lemongrass, Thai basil leaves, & coconut milk. I could just have this with fragrant Thai white rice! So flavourful, spicy, & fragrant *drools*

Yes, we were hungry & satisfied after the good meal! :)

How Kan-eng looks like

It's located right opposite a temple

It's often packed during meal times!

Map to Kan-eng Restaurant

View PerutBesi in a larger map

Thank God for a good dinner after a not-so-good chicken rice lunch! :D


Kan-eng Restaurant
50/3 Kimpradit Road
90110 Hatyai Songkhla
Thailand
Tel: (+66) 074-246 138
Business hours: 10:30 a.m.-2:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m.-9:30 p.m.


*****
After dinner, we just went around town to experience the night life of Hatyai. Food stalls were everywhere, so were stalls selling souvenirs & clothes :)

Oops...PerutBesi forgot to take photos of non-food stalls! :P

As we haven't had our share of dessert, we went around looking for a particular "Tau Foo Fa" stall, recommended by my aunt. After much walking (round & round!), we found the little stall!

Located on this street

Right opposite Golden Crown Plaza

Smooth & unique "Tau Foo Fa" (RM4.00/bowl or THB40)

It was rather expensive (to my utter surprise), but as it was a one-off thing, I didn't find much reason to complain. Besides we got a bowl of smooth tau foo fa in pungent ginger syrup along with generous servings of crispy mini "yau zhar kwai" & ginkgo seeds. Interesting! Have you ever tried such a variant of tau foo fa? I would recommend this, even though it's slightly pricey :)

Hatyai-style "Lin Chi Kang" (RM4.00/bowl or THB40)

If you're not interested with tau foo fa, this is another option - you'll find all sorts of "lin chi kang" ingredients plus some sweet potato bits, cincau, & pink jelly strips. I find that Thais just love sweet potato...it's found in ice creams & now in their "lin chi kang" like dessert too??

Map to the "Tau Foo Fa" stall

View PerutBesi in a larger map

Are you tempted to make a trip to Hatyai now? There's nothing much there, but I'll "pause" here for now to keep you excited for a little longer. Stay tuned with PerutBesi for more on my Hatyai trip :D


Amazing Thailand (Part 2),