Where:
Laksa King
320 Racecourse Rd
Flemmington
Vic 3031
Located in an arcade, follow your nose to Laksa King (no street frontage). They have an impressive range of non laksa dishes as well, which would please any M’sian or S’porean looking for some comforting home dishes like crispy noodles, hor fun, char kway teow, prata, nasi lemak. Ok, enough of that. I am sure you want to know about the laksa.
THE Laksa 9/10
There was the standard curry laksa $8.50, which has shrimps, fishcake, chicken etc. There was also a chicken laksa $8.50, seafood laksa $10.80, assam laksa…. Personally not a fan of assam laksa, so we ordered the seafood laksa, seeing that it came with king prawn, fishcake, calamari and mussels. We asked specifically for the fat vermicelli, which you seldom get from food court type chinese takeaways. Much better than the yellow noodle/skinny vermicelli mix that is so widespread!
So, after a short 10 or so minute wait, our laksa came in large steaming bowls, smelling just like a laksa should. On the top was a generous sprinkling of minced laksa leaf (I requested no fried onion, can’t stand the stuff),which flavoured the broth nicely.
The laksa broth was a bit too curry-ish for my liking, however, was delicious. not too salty, could do with a bit more chili though… not too lemak either, which makes it very easy to slurp down with the slippery noodles (Yum.. hungry again). Not too sure abou the deep fried eggplant either. It’s not typical in Singaporean laksa, and I find that deep fried eggplant is like frying a sponge in oil. i.e. you end up with a heavy blob of slop which is oil soaked! I like the crunch of the bean shoots in there as well, as they were not overdone, so still packed a bit of crunch!
The king prawn (as described in menu) turned out to be 3 gianormous prawns, though terribly crunchy (felt like eating over-processed sea food), was a welcomed sight in my laksa (no taste either, but they are huge!!). 3 mussels were swimming around somewhere in there as well as 3 pieces of tasteless but tender calamari.
Also included in the menu are asian desserts like banana fritters (which i think are overrated and overdone at the asia places here) plus they have chendol andddddd ice kachang! Will have to try that too!
Ambience 5/10
Typical tiny asian eatery. A bit on the grotty side.
Overall 9/10
Very very slippery noodles! yum! slluuurp! Will be going back to try the char kway teow and belachan kang kong and loh mee as well as the Nonya fish and of course the ice kachang! Hell, I’ll work my way thru the menu!!!
Price 10/10
Very reasonable, sort of $10-ish for one dish meals and up to $16.80 for chili prawn main dishes.