Koko Yee

282 Lonsdale St, Melbourne 3000
Date visited: 21st January 2013
Website

Koko Yee is a Malaysian and Indonesian Hawker kitchen that has opened in the CBD several months ago.  Already, it has been reviewed by four other bloggers, New International Students, Ssh. Just Eat, Eat and Be Merry and The Chronicles of Ms I-Hua.  With its strategic location just outside the Lonsdale Street entrance of Melbourne Central, MerlinFan and I have passed by multiple times and decided to pop in finally for a late lunch.

The interior is simplistic and quite reminiscent of hawker stores with concrete flooring, tiny tables and stools to perch upon.  They employ the same method of ordering like a few Asian restaurants have already done here in Melbourne, ie writing down your own orders and then handing them over to the waitress.  I didn't see how this was required as the shop was pretty small, but I didn't mind as that meant less chances of getting orders wrong.

I had a Soda Gembira (aka Happy Soda) which was raspberry soda with condensed milk.  It was quite reminiscent of childhood days, reminded me of... cough syrup.  We used to have one back in Malaysia similar in colour and texture and cherry/ raspberry flavoured @_@  It's probably just me (and my cough syrup memories), but the thick and milky texture just didn't quite meld with the acidic bite from the soda - I would have preferred it with syrup like air bandung, rather than soda.  MerlinFan on the other hand, liked the fizziness.

Happy Soda $4.00

Koko Yee has lots of nice typical hawker dishes like chicken rice, roti, kang kong and char kueh teow (just to name a few) on the menu, so it was quite hard to decide what to have.  Recently they have added chicken and seafood laksa too.  

Now, the owners of Koko Yee have a love for duck apparently, so naturally they have signature duck dishes.  We had to try the duck, so MerlinFan had the Kokos Bebek, which was fried Balinese style duck infused with ginger and served with three condiment sauces, rice, salad and soup.

Kokos Bebek $12.00

The duck was delicious, moist and perfectly done - was nice even without the dips.  Needless to say there wasn't a shred of meat left on the bones when MerlinFan finished with it =)  

I was super boring and in the mood for chicken rice, so I ordered the Hainan Gai Fan. 

Hainan Gai Fan $9.50

The chicken rice was delicious!  The poached chicken was tender and juicy, and the rice flavoursome with just the perfect amount of kecap manis sauce.  I didn't detect much ginger but I'm not a fan of ginger anyway.  This is where I'm coming for my chicken rice fix - so glad I found a nice chicken rice spot in the CBD and under $10 too!

My one peeve with this place was the mini size of the tables.  With big plates, drinks and bowls for soup, there was already little room to maneuver - throw in two clumsy oafs like MerlinFan and me = recipe for disaster.  MerlinFan knocked over half her bowl of soup within the first few minutes of it arriving at our table.  And I knocked over my empty (thank goodness) bowl of soup, toppling her condiment bowl.  Hellish.  For us and the poor waitress who had to clean it up after we left (even though we tried to soak it up with serviettes!)  

Other than that, good food at reasonable prices.  I think it warrants a return visit to try the Duck Kon Lo Mee and laksa.  Note to self: need to be less messy on next visit.



<a href="http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/71/1714615/restaurant/CBD/Koko-Yee-Melbourne"><img alt="Koko Yee on Urbanspoon" src="http://www.urbanspoon.com/b/link/1714615/biglink.gif" style="border:none;padding:0px;width:200px;height:146px" /></a>