The location at Solaris is now closed, but there are many locations across KL, including Desa Park City, Kota Damansara, and LalaPort Mall.
Affordable tong sui for when your mom lives too far away to cook you a bowl.
I could not believe how hard it was to find some Bubur Cha Cha in Mont Kiara. I literally think there are only two places you can get a bowl. One is an expensive chain restaurant, the other is a little place in Solaris that I forgot existed. It’s easy to overlook it when it’s all tucked away up there, but Lol Soon Kee Desserts has a wide variety of Chinese dessert soups and snacks in a casual space where you can slurp and go.
Ambience & Amenities
Lol Soon Kee is located on the second floor of the last building on the right. Take the escalator by the roundabout and turn right at the top.
The cafe’s decor is utilitarian with monochrome walls and exposed ceiling pipes. Inside, the tables and stools are decently spaced apart while the outside has some deck furniture and umbrellas. Neither are particularly comfortable to prevent you from sitting there for hours, but personally, I feel the outdoor seating has a better vibe. The tables are smaller out here but you can people-watch the street below.
In this tiny cafe, there is no toilet or sink available. The closest public facilities are next door on the right of the cafe. Ask for the access card from the cashier.
Menu
Menus are available at the register for you to take back to your table and browse. Keep your eye out for the specials and new arrivals, which will be on a standing display on the counter.
Click on any menu picture to enlarge
The main menu is just one double-sided sheet. Dessert soups, custards and Taiwanese shaved ice are on one side, and the other side has savoury snacks like chee chong fun, pork chop polo buns and meat on rice bowls.
Food
The Sweet Walnut Mix, Black Sesame and Peanut Soup (RM8.50) was definitely not presented as artistically as it was on the menu. The texture is so thick that it barely counts as a soup anymore. More accurately, it’s a notch below a paste. We ate each component separately instead of mixing it all together, which I imagine would’ve resulted in a bowl of grey sludge.
The black sesame is like eating entire spoonfuls of the filling inside those glutinous rice balls. This isn’t a criticism, I love those black sesame glutinous rice balls, so you’ll enjoy this if you do too. The peanut makes for a nice break in flavour, as it’s a very neutral taste compared to the other two parts. Mark liked the walnut the best, feeling it was a well-balanced mix of sweet and creamy, with a good nutty flavour. He said he wouldn’t want to eat an entire bowl of it, but it was enjoyable in a dish like this where there are other things to break up the sameness. I, on the other hand, didn’t like the walnut at all. The taste, to me, had a weird finishing note that I can only describe as “floral.”
The Bubur Cha Cha (RM5.90) looks very plain at first glance – like you’ve been conned and served a pale, bare bowl with no ingredients. Once I dug my spoon in, I was nicely surprised. Big, two-bite chunks of taro, sweet potato and yam are all expertly hiding under the surface. They were consistently cooked – none were undercooked and mealy, and none were so soft that they disintegrated into the soup. There are a good number of each too, about 3-4 pieces of each root veg. The sago, on the other hand, could’ve had a more generous helping. The soup base is coconutty and only lightly sweetened to emphasise the flavours of the vegetables.
Saturday Worthy?
Lol Soon Kee Desserts is ideal for when you’re in the area and could go for a quick snack. It is very reasonably priced and the service is efficient. Our bowls of soup arrived at our table within three minutes of ordering. Even though this is casual food, Lol Soon Kee is the only place I can think of in Mont Kiara that treats it as such. You would otherwise have to commit to eating at a more upscale restaurant just to get a simple bowl of red bean soup, where it would cost twice as much.
The prices at Lol Soon Kee Desserts are cheap enough that I’ve given up on trying to make my favourite soups, and will just come here to fill my cravings for tong sui just like mom used to make. Cooking it myself never works out anyway. I buy all the ingredients, then always realise that I can’t be arsed and then I’m stuck with glutinous rice balls in my freezer for a year. There must be a cosmic force at play that only allows old Asian moms to cook tong sui.
Price for 2 Pax: RM15.80
Bubur Cha Cha: RM5.90
Sweet Walnut, Black Sesame & Peanut Mixed Soup: RM8.50
10% Service: RM1.44
Rounding: (RM0.04)
Lol Soon Kee Desserts
Unit 01-01, Block K (upper floor), Jalan Solaris, Solaris Mont Kiara, 50480 Kuala Lumpur
Opening Hours: Daily, 10am – 11pm
Alcohol Served: No
