The Best Mie Kocok in Blangpidie, South West Aceh #TheLightofAceh (4)

March 12, 2017

If you like family-style breakfast in a place where the food tastes good, the staff are friendly and you don’t have to worry about waiting too long with the Beukah river side view, then Mi Kocok Zidan is the place for you.

Mie Kocok Putih might send some of us into teenaged sniggers, but ‘mie kocok’ in Indonesian means “shaken noodles”, a specialty from Blangpidie, South West Aceh.

It is an all-in-one beef noodle soup: chewy ropes of fresh, handmade noodles shaken about in hot water until cooked then plunged into a deep bowl of clear, sweet beef broth.

You’ll find it at Mie Kocok Blangpidie in near Beaukah river – it’s such a signature dish here they named their restaurant after it. The soup comes with your choice of fixings, but you may as well get the lot and order the mie kocok campur, or combination, littered with springy beef and ribbons of beef tripe.

Crunchy bean sprouts, deep-fried shallots, and chopped green onions add zing but it’s the giant beef ball that’s the highlight, hiding a hard-boiled quail egg right in the middle. It’s like a Kinder Surprise for carnivores.

You sit down, are handed a menu and a docket and you fill in what you'd like to order and provide the "waiter" with the completed order docket. They bring out the food once it's ready. Don't forget to get your own water, drinks, cutlery and any other snacks you may want.

The winning dish is the "Zidan" dish, I order this and it's topped with vegetables and chicken and served dry.

Make sure you also get a packed of fried beef chips to share at your table, you won't be sorry.

A bowl of extra beef is provided and you can add as much or as little soup as you like to get the consistency right. Add some delicious chili sauce and you're good to go.

Dive into a bowl of yamien pangsit goreng, a huddle of egg noodles with chicken mince, deep-fried “kerupuk kulet” for crunch, a saucier combination of egg noodles in a thick sweet gravy.

It’s families and couples who roll in and out for a quick bite to eat or a noodle fix. Help yourself to the bags of prawn crackers on every table. There’s an urn of free mineral water in the corner too.

The mentality extends to ordering – you’ll have to fill out your own docket at your table but it’s simply a matter of ticking what you want before handing it to a roving waiter.

I expect service with a smile and delicious mie kocok noodles. I've been all over Indonesia (Jakarta and Bandung, Borneo, Sulawesi) and have yet to taste any noodles that are as delicious as this.

Mie Kocok Blangpidie, South West Aceh is still my reference point for the best mie kocok noodles.

For 7 people is was roughly $90 including drinks.

What could be better???