LI Lin Xiang is my go-to place when I crave a bowl of good, zesty Sarawak laksa for breakfast or lunch.

A few months ago, it started a dinner service from 6pm till midnight, offering Sarawak dishes such as ayam pansuh, kuey chap, Ojien or oyster pancake and even a Dayak BBQ, among others. 

Ayam pansuh (RM28) is chicken cooked in bamboo with lots of herbs, water added, and with the open end of the bamboo covered with tapioca leaves.

At Li Lin Xiang the end result was a hot soupy chicken carefully poured out of the bamboo into a bowl. We caught the fragrant aromas of lemongrass, ginger, galangal and salam leaves as this was being done.

The welcoming heat of ginger grabbed the palate and embraced the chicken together with a “tonne” of lemongrass cooked with it.

The kampung chicken was firm and sweet, and I enjoyed the soup it was steeped in, after sieving out the ginger and lemongrass in it. Ayam pansuh is an Iban and Bidayuh dish, usually prepared during the Gawai Festival. 

Kuey chap is a Teochew dish best loved in Penang, Johor and Singapore, although I have had a delicious one in Bangkok. 

It’s a dark-spiced stew of pork, pork belly, intestines and pig’s ears, hard-boiled egg and tofu puffs, with broad and flat kwayteow within. 

The flavours of the stew came through the pork cuts and parts in the kuey chap special (RM15.90) here. The best bit for me after the pork belly, stomach and tofu puffs had to be the smooth sheets of kwayteow well soaked in the sauce.

The oyster pancake (RM18) was excellent. The pancake was a thin crispy one, fanning out from the moist, starch centre, with oysters scattered round it.

We loved the crispy, tasty bites but wished there had been more oysters. We should have asked for more oysters and asked them to charge us for them, if possible. That would have made for a more scrumptious oyster pancake.

We opted for a one-person set of ruai nasi babi hutan goreng (RM16.90) or wild boar with rice (ruai means the covered veranda of a longhouse used as a communal space). 

This has wild boar meat cooked in a sauce with chillies, lots of lemongrass and ginger and served with rice. It was a convenient order as we could share and have the rice with the rest of the dishes. 

The wild boar meat was a little tough, although the dark, fragrant sauce was tasty. It’s meat more for braising and cooking in curry than for stir-frying. 

Goreng manicai (RM12) and goreng paku (RM15) were our choice of vegetables. The manicai or sayur manis was especially good, fried with egg and tasted sweet.

The paku, fried with shrimp paste, dried prawns and chilli, turned out a little salty.

We couldn’t resist ordering the ruai signature pork (RM9) in the Dayak BBQ menu, after seeing a fellow diner enjoying it. It tasted like Chinese roast pork, but the skin was not so crispy. 

The BBQ meat was served with calamansi and a tangy and hot chilli sauce. I guess we could have had tuak with this but we didn’t. Other BBQ items include pork rib and chicken sticks, prawns, squid, eggplant and enoki mushrooms.

The restaurant opens from 6pm to midnight and is closed on Monday. Lin Li Xiang is at 93-G Jalan SS22/11, Damansara Jaya, 47400 Petaling Jaya. Tel: 03 7733 6693. – June 11, 2022.

* Eu Hooi-Khaw has been writing about food for the longest time, covering all aspects, from restaurant reviews to cooking and recipes, as well as the healthy side of it. She has written for major newspapers and magazines, published the cookbook Fresh Ingredients, and also writes for her website hooikhawandsu.com.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.