You may queue at this hidden gem noodle shop in Myaree, but you’ll be glad you did

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Hulme Court in Myaree is no place for timid drivers.

A mixed-use commercial precinct with the footprint and multizone layout of an early 2000s dance music festival, Hulme Court is home to a staggeringly diverse set of businesses and services.

It is also home to a staggeringly inadequate number of parking spots. Which means that as soon as someone vacates a car bay, it’s every sedan for themselves, especially around lunch and dinner.

Because while Hulme Court is a bad place for hesitant motorists, it’s long been regarded as one of Perth’s more interesting Asian food precincts. The opening of Bakmi Kochan 88 in March has done little to harm the area’s good standing among diners.

Taking over the former Ipoh Garden site – and pretty much retaining its predecessor’s safe, utilitarian church hall aesthetic – Kochan is the newest member of Perth’s buoyant Indonesian restaurant fraternity.

Kochan is Perth’s first dining room specialising in (non-Halal) Chinese-Indonesian cooking. Like its name suggests, the restaurant’s specialty is bakmi: wheat and egg noodles brought to the archipelago by Southern Chinese migrants.

According to its owners Eveline Indra and husband-and-wife duo Sheila Handijatno and Chandra Harsono, Kochan’s house-made noodles are styled on the Jakarta-style bakmi that dominate locals’ breakfast and lunch eating habits.

During my time in the Indonesian capital last year, I didn’t eat any bakmi so can’t speak to the dish’s Jakarta-ness. But as far as texture and mouthfeel go, it’s spot-on. I’d put Kochan’s noodles in the same weight division as Yip, Two Hands and Perth’s other champion noodle joints.

Kochan pitches its bakmi as karet: the Bahasa word for rubber. Considering the impressive bounce-per-ounce of these craggy noodles, it’s an apt stage name. Thinner kecil noodles are less taut yet still sport terrific chew.

According to noodle restaurant lore, the house specialty is usually the first bowl on the menu. Here that opening batter is the bakmi kochan spesial that pairs the noodles with minced pork and poached, borderline mushy chicken. It’s good and shows off the noodle’s spring, but my MVP is further down the batting order.

Presenting the bakmi babi komplit. It features that same minced pork as the spesial but ups the porkiness via crunchy roast pork belly and thin slices of fatty char siu (also made with belly). Smithereens of fried pork crackling, a common addition to all bowls, taste so much like bacon-flavoured Rice Bubbles. (Don’t be tempted by the garlicky, gluggy Hainanese chicken rice variant of this porky fantasy: the noodle OG is the smart play.)

The same noodle dough also features in the pangsit: the Bahasa word for wontons. Kochan’s pangsit, however, are not the ethereal comet tail-style of wonton, but sturdy triangles of well-seasoned chicken mince bound in fat, tourniquet-like strips of dough that are served boiled in soup or fried alongside a vinegary, sweet chilli sauce.

While ordering at the counter, other (pre)fried things in the display cabinet will vie for your attention. One is the hekeng: a silky variant of southeast Asia’s ubiquitous pork and prawn roll, perhaps not as crunchy as the better loh baks and ngo hiangs doing the rounds. No such issues with the baso goreng though: golden billiard balls of pork and prawn, slashed, battered and rendered crisp by the deep fryer.

There seems to be a plate of baso goreng on every table, and rightly so. Whether you and the rest of your nattily dressed family look like the stars of an Indonesian Succession or you’re a slouchy 20-something wearing a Yonex track top: the appeal of straight-talking, accessible deliciousness like Kochan’s is universal. Even if you’re not from Jakarta or Indonesia. And even if you’ve had to queue on the weekend.

Want dessert? While there’s a passable bakpao coklat – a bao bun freighting a crumbly chocolate paste – better to get your sugar fix via the drinks list instead. If it’s subtle and cooling you want, go the grass jelly and soymilk refreshment of the es soy cincau. At the other of the flavour spectrum is es cendol: a thicc, caramelly head-rush of coconut milk, green squiggles of house-made cendol “worms” and palm sugar. It’s not a taste for timid drinkers.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.