JB Eat: Zainal's Place Mee Rebus Johor @ Taman Sri Tebrau
- Rick
- Apr 28
- 3 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Zainal's Place is a Malay restaurant located in one corner of a row of shops along Jalan Keris in Taman Sri Tebrau, or commonly known as Dai Mah Garden (大马花园), right next to Restoran Rasa Ribuan (千里香餐室). The foodcourt-style restaurant serves Malaysian Malay delights, including the popular Johor-specialty mee rebus Johor.
Zainal's Place used to be a single-unit restaurant and had expanded its premise in 2018 to occupy two units. The new and clean restaurant now functions as a self-service foodcourt with stalls serving a long list of local dishes including mee soto, mee rebus Johor, nasi campur, sup tulang, lamb stew, etc, and also a beverage stall.
On one wall inside the restaurant, a mural depicts the near-century history of Zainal's Place. It started as a peddler selling mee rebus in the 1930's to having a stall, called Mee Rebus Haji Wahid, in a marketplace in the 1950's. In 1977, a restaurant named Zainal Mee Rebus was opened as a branch of Haji Wahid. In 2014, it was renamed to "Zainal's Place" and serving more dishes other than mee rebus. (This is my own interpretation of the mural.)
Zainal's signature Mee Rebus Johor is slightly different from other mee rebus that I have tried. Thick yellow noodle and slices of a hard-boiled egg are covered with a thick gravy and topped with green chilli, spring onions, coriander and crispy toppings for crunchiness. A lime (or mandarin orange?) adds some sweet-acidity flavours to the dish. The gravy is not too starchy nor soupy, has mellow sweet-spicy taste and without the sambal chili that is usually added to spice up the dish. This dish is very nice indeed and great for breakfast.
It is said that the Johor-version mee rebus uses mashed tapioca / sweet potato and beef stock to prepare the gravy. But, since these ingredients are not obvious, I will put it here "for info. only".
Other than the original Mee Rebus Johor, ayam (chicken) and gearbox (lamb shank bone) — udang (prawn) seemed to have been taken off the menu — can also be added to the dish. With ayam, the mee rebus Johor is added with several pieces of crispy and tender fried chicken.
The Sup Tulang, another specialty of Zainal's Place, with two big pieces of lamb shank bones and can be added with noodle or lontong — a Malay rice cake similar to ketupat but using banana leave to wrap instead of coconut leave. A straw is provided for sucking the rich bone marrow from the big bones. As expected of traditional sup tulang, there is not much meat. Yet, the few pieces of meat is well-cooked until it can easily detached from the bones using just a fork. The soup is flavourful and delicious, which makes the soup dish a must to try.
Lamb shank bones can also be added to mee rebus as "gearbox" option. It is like going for two dishes on one plate. To have more mutton, try their lamb stew — which I will do next.
Address:
89, Jalan Keris, Taman Sri Tebrau, 80050 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
Opening Hours:
7am to 4:30pm (Wed starts at 7:30am) | Daily
How to Get There:
From JB Sentral, take myBAS T11, T14 or T20 to Taman Sri Tebrau or CT to Jalan Tombak. Read JB Bus Guide: Getting to Pelangi & Dai Mah Garden.
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