Tamparuli’s best restaurant: Wun Chiap: makes probably the best fried mee in Sabah
February 15th, 2007Note: Before I start, I should clarify that this restaurant is of the non-halal category.
This mee Tuaran (fried mee) is the flagship product of this family run restaurant, located next to Bank Simpanan Nasional.
(BSN) Tamparuli. Most of the time the restaurant is packed. When I do manage to get a seat, I see most people would order this succulent fried mee. Nobody makes them better than Wun Chiap Restaurant, a business which has been running for as long as I can remember.
Frankly speaking, nobody else can cook up such a seeming simple meal better. “Konomen” there also among the very best I have ever tasted. They should get an award from the Ministry of Tourism.
People would drive all the way from Kota Kinabalu just to eat here, then drive back. At no other restaurant in Tamparuli could you see people queuing up, at any day of the week.
I would go so far as to say apart from the bridge (which spawned the overplayed Jambatan Tamparuli) and the Wednesday tamu, Wun Chiap is the 3rd biggest attraction in this otherwise sleepy town, whose best days seem to be in the past when you had to
go through it in order to reach Kota Belud and Kudat.
And no, this is not a s***d post (that is apparently a dirty world nowadays), neither by the Wun Chiap family nor that American company whose name starts with a P.
This is merely a recommendation by a local who has been to quite a few restaurants around Malaysia and overseas.
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This fried mee should be called Tamparuli Mee. There is a gulf between Tuaran Mee and Tamparuli Mee. The cooking style is also different (yupp…I have been to their kitchen so many times!) The raw mee is made by them and you can actually buy it at a cost of 50 sen per bundle (last year’s price, not sure of cost now!). They might also refuse to sell if there are huge customers waiting for their turn.
This is a place I never fail to patronise whenever I am near that area. When I first ate there, the price islike RM2 per plate. Then over the years the price slowly goes north in tandem with the cost of living - in year 2000, RM2.50, then last year RM3.00. I usually order mine on RM6 per plate LOL that can feed 3 people, while a friend of mine that is really crazy about this Tamparuli Mee goes for RM8 on a huge 1-foot plate. Those around in the restaurant were like going gaga looking at our orders LOL. The family (servers, chefs, mother) were not surprised and told those whoever were curious enough that “that is their standard order” LOL. Now, when I went there 2 months back, the RM6 plate has suddenly shrinked to about RM4-priced plate and the RM8 became RM6. LOL My usual ’standard order’ is now RM8 while my friend’s RM10 LOL.
The key to enjoying this mee is to eat it slowly and in small portion and not gulp it down your throat…!
Whenever we go there, the server/waiter (that dude with Prince Charles-like ears) would ask, “RM6, RM8, RM10?” LOL
I’ve been eating at Wun Chiap for as long as I can remember.
At least 2 of the brothers are very good badminton players.
and at least 2 or 3 of the brothers are still bujang lapokkkkk!!!!!!!!