Perched in a quiet corner of Petaling Jaya is Chinese restaurant Green View. The restaurant was established in 1993 and its 33-year-old history and success has largely been hinged on its reputation for producing the best version of the Malaysian Chinese dish of sang har mee.
Thought to have been crafted in KL at some point in the 1950s, sang har mee is essentially fried noodles laced in a thick, viscous gravy boosted by chicken broth that is topped with a single, signature feature – giant freshwater prawns filled with roe. It is the roe that lends sang har mee its irrevocably creamy, aquatic underpinnings.
Freshwater prawns are graded by size on a scale from U1 to U20 – the smaller the number, the larger the prawn. While many restaurants and stalls use smaller, cheaper U20 prawns, Green View only uses U2 and U3 prawns, which is what gives its signature noodles that creamy, aromatic sea-faring notes.
This year, the restaurant has introduced two new variants of ita signature dish – a Moutai sang har mee and mala sang har mee.
“So our vision as second-generation owners of Green View is we really want to champion sang har mee. Because this is a truly Malaysian Chinese dish. It’s not from China or anywhere else. So we put in a lot of effort to make it stable. And we also invented two new flavours,” says Beatrice Tey who together with her husband Tan Jay Wvin are part of the second-generation owners of the eatery.
The Moutai Sang Har Mee (seasonal price) pays homage to a Chinese high-proof clear spirit that is regarded as the national liquor of the country. Across top restaurants in Beijing for instance, Moutai plays a starring role, either as a tipple of choice or an additive to a meal.
“My husband and I have gone to China so many times and we are so inspired by Moutai. In China, they’re always like Moutai. And we were like – can we do that in our sang har mee? So we did a lot of R&D. And this really works for our China customers,” says Tey.
At Green View, the Moutai sang har mee is made table-side, poured into a pan sizzling with the sang har noodles and broth to create a hot, splashy entrance. On the palate, the Moutai adds a subtle intoxicating element to the dish, enhancing its natural flavours to fullest effect. The prawns are also coated in the Moutai, lending an alcoholic frisson.
The Mala Sang Har Mee (seasonal price) meanwhile is an ode to the pervasive influence of mala (the tongue-numbing effect produced by Szechuan peppercorns). Here, a rich mala sauce drenches the noodles (in this instance, it is ramen noodles) engendering a lovely, aquatic voyage buoyed by the fiery undertones of the peppercorns, which play a quiet, less dogmatic role that lends itself to light, carefully calibrated undulations of heat as opposed to pure, blistering laceration.
The two new additions showcase the diversity and breadth of sang har mee, while still retaining the essence of the original, paving the way for future iterations of this beloved Malaysian dish.
Restoran Green View
8, Jalan 19/3
Section 19
46300 Petaling Jaya
Tel: 016 312 3523
Open daily: 11am to 3pm; 5.30pm to 10pm
