Madam Bee's Kitchen

177 Jalan Kampung Cina

20100 Kuala Terengganu

Coordinates: 5.332875, 103.132549

Our bellies full, and to fulfill our promise picking up where we left off yesterday we headed to Kampung Cina again.

A long time ago growing up here my friends and I would cycle to Kampung Cina to a shop we fondly called “¹Mok Mek ²Ceranang”. To this day the aromas emanating from this shop fills me with much nostalgia. When I say ‘aromas’ I mean there are two distinct and different kinds of smell wafting from this shop.

¹closest thing to a translation is ‘Aunty’, I guess?

²mixed vegetable salad served with thick spicy peanut sauce

The front portion of the shop used to sell comic books which we couldn’t afford to buy, and merely glanced at its covers. So embedded in my mind to this day was the smell of freshly printed comic books.

The back portion was where all the action was. For as little as RM1 we could each have a decent meal of ³Keropok Lekor Rebus and a glass of ⁴Air Mata Kucing. Unlike the darker variety sold elsewhere in town the Keropok Lekor Rebus at “Mok Mek Ceranang” was much paler, almost whitish and typical of the Chinese variety. This second smell was what filled me with nostalgia.

³steamed fish sausage was the closest translation I could find

⁴a concoction of Longan (literally dragon eye) and dates

So with these memories in mind we came across a shop called Madam Bee’s Kitchen which is situated pretty close to where “Mok Mek Ceranang” used to be all those years ago here in Kampung Cina. I gleefully swung the door open and what I found was…

Perhaps I had too much expectation, and perhaps “Mok Mek Ceranang” will forever remain a sweet and distant memory. Which is not saying anything bad about Madam Bee’s Kitchen, because what they have to offer is pretty similar (but not close enough) to what I envisioned.

All in all the place was pretty appealing, the décor traditional enough and very modern ⁵Kopitiam-ish.

⁵literally coffee shop in Hokkien

keropok lekor rebus

rojak ceranang

decent

Memories aside, Madam Bee's Kitchen serves pretty much the traditional Terengganu ⁶Peranakan fare. To the uninitiated (Brendan and Cat) this shop is pretty amazing, and I have to agree. Would we recommend this to our friends? Heck yeah!

⁶Straits-born Chinese