We visited this place in Brinchang twice within 17 hours because the food and service were very good (though my family being able to speak various Chinese dialects helped that!). Tuan Yuan is a small steamboat restaurant which also does various dishes.
On our first visit it was almost empty, but the next day we had to take the last table. It’s a canteen style family owned place, meaning it doesn’t look like anything special, but the food surprised us.
Everyone but me had steamboat in the evening, with a standard clear broth and a very good tom yam soup. They went for the seafood option, with clams, prawns, fish, fish balls of various sorts, mushrooms, tofu, bean curd skin, eggs and noodles. They all thought it was excellent.
As I was being difficult and vegetarian, I asked for the kung pao tofu. Their homemade tofu was soft on the inside, crispy on the outside, and came in a dried chilli and ginger sauce with plenty of onions. It was savoury and pungent, with a little spice to it.
Salted egg fried mushrooms had a salty, rich, slightly sweet flavour with a little bit of a hit from small slices of red chilli. Absolutely delicious, with my only complaint being it could have had a bit more sauce.
Next lunchtime, they recommended we try the same sauce with thinly sliced pumpkin. They were right, as the sweetness from the gourd complimented the salted egg beautifully, plus the texture worked better – though I probably had the same complaint as above about sauce…too good to not have more!
The other vegetarian dish we tried was the oatmeal curry tofu. The same crispy/soft tofu as before, it was coated in a mild curry (reminiscent of coronation style curry in the UK) and topped with oatmeal. Delicious. I will steal that dish.
Family had a steamed fish with ginger, garlic and chilli, which was picked clean; they hoovered it up.
Paku (a type of jungle fern) with pork was also popular.
They preferred the braised bitter gourd to the chicken which was a little chewy.
Overall, this easily beat the other two steamboat restaurants we have tried in Brinchang in the past, and we’d thoroughly recommend Tuan Yuan. I expect we’ll be back.
Address: 6 Jalan Besar, 39100 Brinchang, Pahang
Telephone: 0175207810