Kopitiam stall (clam noodle soup) in Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur

Lai Foong Lala Noodles

Clams Washed One by One

3.5 of 5

The trick at Lai Foong is grit, or rather the total absence of it. Cindy Chai started a stall inside this old Chinatown coffee shop in 2008 selling noodles and fried rice. She cooked soft Venus clams in a superior stock with ginger and rice wine, a regular told her to put noodles in it, and she listened. That customer deserves a plaque.

What makes the bowl is labour. Most cooks soak clams and hope. Chai's family opened them one at a time and washed each one, and her children grew up peeling pail after pail after school. The broth is built on chicken, sweetened by the clams and sharpened by ginger and wine. It is the kind of soup that fixes a long-haul flight, a bad meeting or a Tuesday. Order it with noodles or with bee hoon. Nobody will judge.

Lai Foong itself is a decades-old kopitiam with a big English sign, a cluster of stalls and a famous beef noodle counter run by the family. The lala business has grown branches since, and the Jalan Sultan shop picked up a Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2023, but this corner is where it started. A new generation is at the stoves now. The clams still get washed one by one.

Order this

Lala noodles in the ginger and rice wine broth, Lala bee hoon soup, Beef noodles from the stall next door

The damage

$

Go

Lunch on a weekday, early, before Chinatown's office crowd fills the tables

Find it

Lai Foong Restaurant, 138 Jalan Tun H.S. Lee, 50000 Kuala Lumpur

Website

thestar.com.my