Kenko Home Cuisine, Northbridge

Satisfying and delicious are the two adjectives I’d use if someone asked me about the quality of the home-cooked meals at Kenko. This restaurant is located almost across the Hogs Breath café at Northbridge. I drove by this area many times but it wasn’t until my cousin took me there that I realised that the indoor premise was quite huge! As I walked around the restaurant, I saw a semi-private room that can be used for a small – medium size of private function.

Just like its name, Kenko Home Cuisine offered a different array of Malaysian home cooked dishes which were very well cooked and the sauce used was really delicious. Kenko is a family owned restaurant and the owner used to have a restaurant back in Malaysia. When the whole family decided to move to Perth permanently, they also brought in the Chef that used to work for their restaurant in Malaysia.

The staff were really friendly and the food serving was substantial for what we paid for. If you want to try a new dish, the staff can also give you different recommendations on the dish to try from their extensive list of meals in the menu.

Kenko Home Cuisine's Fried Hakka Pork Belly

We started with the Fried Hakka Pork Belly with chili sauce on the side. Our taste buds straight away wanted to try the rest of our food because this pork belly entrée was crispy and wasn’t drowned in oil.

Kam Heong Stir Fry Clam from Kenko Home Cuisine

When the golden Kam Heong Stir Fry Clam arrived, we were amazed by its aroma. This dish was a very popular dish served in many restaurants and hawkers in Malaysia. The dish itself was saucy and very easy to eat, our tastebuds easily surrendered to the mouth-watering clams.

The Three Flavoured Fried Crispy Chicken scored quite high in the yum-o-meter! The lime leaves and chili mixed very well and gave the exotic aroma.

The sweet black sauce stir fry crispy pork belly was quite crunchy. The sweet soy was the soul of this dish but because it was well cooked, the dish wasn’t excessively sweet.

My cousin eagerly ordered the Curry Claypot fish for us and he said it was going to be a big portion. He was right, the claypot was massive but right away the aroma of the curry hit our nose. Not only huge, the claypot actually contains a lot of fish and vegetables in it. This dish also contain a good fiery kick from the spicy curry broth. Later on my cousin told everyone that he ordered the wrong fish in the menu but we were more than happy with the curry fish.

Other dishes that we had was my favourite Sambal Kangkung (blachan) which I usually ordered in every Chinese and Malaysian restaurant that I go to. The Herbal Jelly was a perfect palate cleanser for our dinner spread at Kenko. We literally couldn’t move after we finished our dinner and just wanted to stick to our chair for as long as we could.

As we move closer towards CNY, Kenko will have a Chinese New Year (CNY) special menu which requires to be pre-ordered one day before and they also offer BYO at $2 per customer.

For the city workers, Kenko lunch special costs $10 for the rice dishes and $12 for the noodle dishes, which is a really good price for the quality of food that you’re getting. I think that night I only tried a tiny portion of what Kenko offered and as I’m writing this review, I know that I’m keen to go back to Kenko for other dishes!