Tang Yuan Fang (Kepong)

A tang yuan (glutinous rice ball) specialist on a row of shops in Taman Usahawan Kepong, in Kepong, Kuala Lumpur. It opened in June 2025, and the air-conditioned room is a comfortable place to sit and eat.

The bowl is full of rice balls, big and small. The soup has a good kick of ginger, warming you up slowly, with a gentle sweetness. The big balls are filled with peanut or black sesame paste. The ginger comes from Bentong in Pahang, and you can ask for it less spicy and less sweet. Besides tang yuan, there are other old-school sweets such as muah chee (glutinous rice dough coated in black sesame or peanuts) and bubur cha cha.

Matthew, who runs the shop, grew up making tang yuan with his grandmother, who sold them at the market in Port Klang, where she was a well-known tang yuan hawker. He is the third generation of a family recipe going since 1988. The stall he opened in a coffee shop in Taman Paramount, Petaling Jaya, is still running, and the Kepong shop is the family's first standalone shop. There are so many customers that the dough is now mixed by machine, but the balls are still rolled by hand.

When I'm in the mood for gently sweet tang yuan, this is a place I'd drop in.