If you call yourself the King of Soup, what do you have to do to live up to that reputation? For Sabri Salleh, you have to serve not only the normal mundane Bihun Sup and Sup Daging (Beef Soup), you also have to expand your horizon and get a lot more adventurous. C'mon, there must be other parts of a heifer that people eat than just beef, right? At a small shop in Taman Tun Dr. Ismail, occupying only half a lot, you can get ox tongue, tripe, intestines, gearbox, beef strips, tendons, bones and even torpedo to put in your soup stock. Torpedos are actually the part that looks like a torpedo and can only be found on bulls... hence the name torpedo. Supposedly, it has some kind of an aphrodisiacal power, but is available only on days Sabri can get supplies from his suppliers. So yes, the King of Soup gets very adventurous with his soup offerings. You can actually do your own Fear Factor here if you want. But seriously, how would something like this taste? Let’s find out...
At Raja Sup, you can mix and match. Our rule of thumb is to mix in about 3-4 pieces of meat and two pieces of vegetables. Each piece costs about RM2- RM5 depending on what you pick. Our first experiment is a combination of ox tongue, rump, tripe, ox tail, button and oyster mushrooms. Second bowl has oxtail, rump and cauliflower. The third has intestines, tendons and oxtail. These selections are sent to the back where Sabri has two huge cauldrons of beef stock, and where the final spice ingredients will be added according to the selection. This means that each bowl of soup, whilst having the same soupy base will not taste the same. Nice. You will notice that soups with an intestine majority will have an essence of dried shrimps (belacan) while the oxtail broth will be sourish. It is this tweaking ability that gives Sabri an edge over other soup sellers. You might think that Sabri's soup recipes comes passed down from generations in his family but no, it is all his creation.
Raja Sup also offers over 250 different dishes in a variety of Malay and Thai infused cooking styles as Sabri comes from Kelantan. We took this chance to order up some Ox Tongue Cooked in Red Sauce. Apart from this, Sabri also offers ayam kampung, ayam percik, beef gulai kawah, duck gulai and a variety of ulams on a daily basis. Anyway, with a King’s feast on the table and a plate of rice each, everything was picked clean. All soups come in claypot bowls and has a nice stocky but mildly sour flavour, the meats are soft and juicy. The ox tongue in red sauce was sweet to complement the sour flavours of the soup and the ayam kampung was fresh and crunchy. A delicious and heavy meal indeed. No need for rice if you prefer a slightly lighter meal as the soup can actually be a meal in itself. You can get your fix at Raja Sup daily from 7am to about 10pm. What about the torpedos you might ask? After contemplating that for a few minutes, we've decided to leave that for another adventurous visit at Raja Sup (phew!)....
