Chao Man Ji / CMJ Kitchen (潮满记老潮汕饭店), a casual Chao-Shan restaurant in Johor Bahru, specialises in authentic traditional Teochew-Swatow (or Chaozhou-Shantou / Chao-Shan) cuisine, featuring classic heritage dishes — including beef hotpot (牛肉火锅), braised lion-head goose (狮头鹅), raw marinated seafood (生腌), etc — and also traditional snacks. It is located on the ground floor of R&F Mall, a stone’s throw from JB CIQ.
Beef hotpot is one of CMJ Kitchen’s signature dishes, featuring fresh beef that is delivered to the restaurant in less than 3 hours after butchering and without freezing. Five types of soup-base are available for blanching thinly-sliced beef from different parts of a cow, alongside other add-on ingredients. There are raw-marinated seafood (crabs and prawns) dishes, claypot porridge, fried snacks, braised goose meat platters, cooked dishes, etc — all the dishes are Chaozhou and Shantou specialties.
For first-timers, Beef Hotpot (牛肉火锅) is best with original, clear soup base boiled with cow bones to taste the natural flavours and textures of the fresh beef slices — we opted for Yuanyang Soup Base (鸳鸯锅) that includes both the original clear soup and mala spicy soup. The cow-bone-boiled clear soup is light, rich and flavourful and the mala soup has nice mala flavours with medium spiciness. For extra flavours, go to the condiment bar and concoct the dipping sauces as desired — Chao-Shan satay sauce (沙茶酱) is a must for authentic taste.
We have ribeye beef (吊龙), marbled beef (雪花) and fat / belly beef (肥牛) of different textures — cow’s tongue (牛舌) was sold out just before we submit our order. All the three beef plates belonged to the most-tender meat category and require about 8 seconds of blanching — for me, I use visual to haul out the meat when they turned pink. The meats are very fresh and very tender, of course — I will try the textures of other meats next time.
Add-on ingredients for our hotpot includes enoki mushrooms, yau mak chye (油麦菜), beancurd and not-to-be-missed shrimp paste (虾滑). The shrimp paste comes in five pieces and shaped like leaves. They are bouncy, tender and with crunchy minced shrimps.
The Lion-Head Goose Double Platter (狮头鹅双拼) — opted for goose thigh and goose wings — has braised goose meat that are not saucy and not too dry either. The meats are very tender and the skins are not tough too.
The Stir-Fry Satay Beef (沙茶炒牛肉) uses sliced beef to quick-fried with Chao-Shan satay sauce. It is a delightfully tasty dish with very tender meat. This popular Chao-Shan dish is a must for every meal at CMJ Kitchen.
We have tried Chao-Shan beef hotpot at Baheli Shantou Beef Hotpot (八合里汕头牛肉火锅) in Beijing and at Guantang Niu Da Ka Beef Hotpot (官塘牛大咖牛肉火锅) in Chaozhou and are really delighted to find authentic beef hotpot at CMJ Kitchen in Johor Bahru, so near to Singapore. And, we will be back again for the other Chao-Shan specialties.
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Address:
R&F Mall, Ground Floor, LOT G-001
Tanjung Puteri, 80300 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
Opening Hours:
11am to 10pm | Closed on Monday
Nearby:
More @ Bandar Johor Bahru:
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