Chung Kee Yong Tau Foo

 Chung Kee Yong Tau Foo

Address : 1277, Jalan King, Taman Hoover, 31650 Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia

Opening and Closing Hours: Mon–Sun 8:30 AM–5:30 PM

Contacts No: 012-5071482

How to go there?

If you using GPS, you may use the longitude and latitude below,

GPS: 4°34'56.5"N 101°05'08.9"E

or, if you are using Waze you may search for Restoran Chong Kee Pokok Besar, 

and, this is the exact the location in Google Map.

How the shop look like?

The History of Yong Tau Foo

Yong tau foo is a Hakka cuisine that is made of bean curb (Tofu) with ground meat mixture or fish palate. The Hakka are the dialect group who migrated from the Northern China to the Southern China region. Initially, they are accustomed to having steamed buns, which we call it "pau" in mandarin. But, they are unable to get hold wheat flour in the southern region. Therefore they ended up stuffing the meat into the bean curd as what they do in making the steamed bun, and the new dish yong tau foo is created.  

The yong tau foo can be served either in the broth as soup or deep fried. The dish is can be eaten by itself or serve it with different type of noodles and soup, such as laksa and curry. 

Chung Kee (忠记) Yong Tau Foo also known as Big Tree Foot (大树脚). It has been considered as one of the most famous food in Ipoh. It has been operated for more than 17 years. He tell us that the stall named as 大树脚 (big tree foot) in Cantonese because they are operating under a big tree. In fact, the food stall under the shady tree is good enough for their customer to avoid the hot sun when they having their yong tau foo. So, Mr. Show do not need to worry his customer appetite affected by the hot weather. 

This photo shows the environment of Chung Kee Yong Tau Foo last time and the "Big Tree" can clearly be seen. 

The traditional young tau foo is very simple dish of stuffed meat tofu. When the competition is increasing, Mr. Show and his wife plan to have some modification on the yong tau foo they sell. They started to insert the mixture of ground meat or fish paste on the vegetables, mushroom, eggplant and etc. The variety of choice able to fulfill different customer needs and wants. The types of Fried Yong Tau Foo offered by Chung Kee including fried wan tan (炸云吞), fried bean curd (炸腐皮), fried brinjal (炸茄子), fried chilli (炸辣椒), fried yam bean (炸沙葛) and etc. While the non-fried yong tau foo offered by Chung Kee including fish balls (鱼丸), brinjal (茄子), tau foo (豆腐), ladies finger (羊角豆), bitter gourd (苦瓜) and etc. The price of each Yong Tau Foo is only cost RM0.85 onwards for both fried and non-fried Yong Tau Foo.

The variety of yong tau foo in Chung Kee 

They also said that they has offer three types of home-made soup which are curry soup, laksa soup and the ordinary soup. These soup is made from their secret sauce and ingredient. Normally, customers will order Curry noodle or laksa which available at Chong Kee together with the fried and non-fried yong tau foo. In addition, they also will order a cup of red bean drink（红豆冰）as a complementary for the food and it seems to be a 'saviour' in a hot afternoon. 

Mr Show tell us that he and his wife, Madam Choo will wake up at 4am daily to make over 20 types of both fried and non-fried Yong Tau Foo. In order to let the customers taste the most crunchy and fresh fried Yong Tau Fu, they will only fried the Yong Tau Foo when it is being ordered by customers. According to Mr and Mrs Show, there are more than 10 workers helping in operating this stall everyday and each of them is having their own role and responsibility. During lunch hours, there is always a lot of order queuing, which can be see in the picture below.

They also mentioned that this stall has attract many foreigners to pay a visit which including Japanese, Germans and Korean. They told us that there are some of the customers brought about 300 pieces of Yong Tau Foo when they pay a visit to the store. Previously,the 8TV food and beverage entertainment program "Ho Chiak" paid a visit to his stall and made an interview about his yong tau foo. Since the store is getting famous, there is a lot of competitor try to imitate his store name. So, Mr. Show strongly emphasize that they do not have any branches at Kuala Lumpur or any other states in Malaysia. 

Feedback from the Customers

Customer A said that the Yong Tau Foo is very fresh and

Crunchy.

Customer B said that she purposely come from Kuala Lumpur together with her family just to try the yong tau foo. Because she heard from her friends that it is very famous and the food is delicious. She also said that the laksa is very nice.  

Customer C said that his family member are the regular customers and the sellers is very friendly and the food price is very reasonable and affordable.  

Customer D: The environment of the stall is really good; she and her family members are not feeling hot, and this has increased her appetite in eating the food.

Value Propositions 

Value propositions refer to the benefits that the customers can get from purchasing the goods or services. There are a numbers of value proposition the customers can get from having the yong tau foo at Chung Kee. First and foremost, the customer may enjoy the yong tau foo with reasonable and affordable price. Although Chung Kee is getting more and more famous, but Mr. Show did not increase its yong tau foo price. 

In addition, Chung Kee yong tau foo provide a lot of choice for their yong tau foo. As i had mention in the earlier section, the customers can choose a variety of yong tau foo from their fried and non-fried list. They also can choose which type of soup they want. The variety of choice can fulfill the different needs and wants of the customers. 

Lastly, Mr. Show and his wife will wake up early in the morning to prepared all the ingredient of yong tau foo just to ensure the freshness and crunchiness of the deep fried yong tau foo. In fact they will only start to fried the yong tau foo when it is ordered by customer, so that the customers get to taste the most fresh and crunchy yong tau foo.