Restoran Sim Hap Ke, Taman Connaught, Cheras

*Note: This restaurant is no longer in business, it has been replaced by another Chinese dai chow.

One of our favourite Chinese restaurants in the Cheras area is Restoran Sim Hap Ke. When we first moved to KL, I often looked on the internet for restaurant recommendations and this turned out to be one of the better finds.

The restaurant itself isn't very big, and the place fills up very quickly. There is no menu here; you either order based on the captain's recommendation or take your pick from the numerous pictures of dishes plastered over the restaurant's wall. It's not an easy task as a lot of the dishes look very appetizing! The following dishes were tried over several visits to the restaurant.

If I was to choose my favorite dish from this restaurant, this has to be it. The Deep Fried Squid with Salted Egg is superb. The salted egg batter was light, fragrant and crisp without being oily. Utterly delicious! In fact, I'm craving for some as I write this post.

I'm not a huge fan of pig's intestines so I only had a few bites of the Stir Fry Pig Intestine's with Dried Shrimp and Cili Padi. It had a nice chewy texture, and the dried shrimp flavoured it extremely well. The Unc loved it.

The House Special Tofu with Loufah Gourd (seng kwa tofu) is a must-order for us everytime we dine here. The tofu is silky smooth, plus the gravy is excellent to go with rice.

As for greens, the Stir Fried Kai Lan was tasty and had a nice crunchy texture.

On our first visit here, we enjoyed all the dishes we ordered and finished them in no time. We found ourselves craving for more, so we ordered the DongPo Pork. The DongPo Pork here is pretty decent, although it is only ranked second after my favorite at Loon Sing, Nilai.

The pork was tender and well flavoured. It had that nice melt-in-your-mouth layer of fat. However, on another ocassion that we ordered this, I did find the gravy to be slightly overseasoned and hence saltier than usual.

The Salt Baked LaLa (clams) is one of the specialty dishes here. On our first visit, we were disappointed when the captain informed us that there was no lala available that day. I guess they would only serve this when they get fresh lalas. Since it was one of the most talked about dishes on the blogosphere for Sim Hap Ke, I was expecting to be blown away by the taste of this dish. The lalas were fresh and juicy and the flavour went well with rice. It was good but not spectacular.

The Three Flavour Ribs was a rather unique tasting dish; sweet, sour and savoury owing to the cili padi, curry leaf, butter and lemon used. The ribs were quite meaty and tender. This is a dish which has to be eaten very quickly as the sauce becomes starchy after being left for a while.

My mum's favorite vegetable dish here is the Sei Tai Tin Wong (Four Heavenly Kings) which consists of french beans, four angled bean, petai and ladyfingers. The vegetables are stir fried with XO sauce and spicy shrimp paste. Very fragrant and crunchy!

The Braised Pork Belly with Yam Slices was pretty good. The pork belly with its wobbly fat was a delight to eat.

Verdict: What I like most about this place is that the food is always well flavoured and nicely portioned. There are still many dishes here which we have yet to try, such as the 1 barrel chicken but we would have to round up more diners to join us as the portion is huge!


Air-conditioned.

Opening times: 10.30am to 3.00pm; 5.30pm to 10.00pm. Closed on Thursday.

Service: Good.

Price: No itemized billing. Expect to pay RM20 per person.

Location: Restoran Sim Hap Ke, 26, Jalan Waras 1, Taman Connaught, 56000 Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Tel: 012-398 5688 / 012-319 3381

GPS Coordinates: 3.082837, 101.737368