TRAVELENSES

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