More good eating
I am embarrassed to admit that for late-lunch, early-dinner yesterday, I ate at the same stall in the same food court that I ate at the first night with Yoga. All of this city's amazing eats, and I go back to the shiny blandness of commercial-ville. Ever since my big go-round with those nasty bugs when I first got to Korea, if I don't eat on a very regular basis, and the right food at that, my system goes into panic mode. Not as in I feel panicky. As in, I lose the ability to think straight. I get moody and aggressive. I can't make decisions well. It's like altitude sickness, without the altitude.
Stupid is not a good way to be when you are alone on the road. So I have learned to recognize the signs and am pretty good at mitigating them. My first line of defense (after the dried fruit snacks perpetually in my bag)...no matter how mediocre (and honestly, the food court food is far from mediocre), always have one go-to place that is easily accessible and which I know is reliable and then focus on it like it's the only edible thing on earth once I realize I have gone too long without sustenance (easy to do in a new city, full of interesting things to see and do). Malay noodles, here I come! Better make that an extra-large...
After the noodles I diversified my mall experience into drinkable dessert. If you ever get the chance, definitely try the 'Jade Love Jelly' at the Taiwan tea house. I have no idea what it was (other than so sweet that it made my stomach cramp), but it is truly exceptional. A tall glass loaded with transparent, barely-jelled fruit jelly, soaked in passion-fruit juice, and then doused with something thick and heavenly and utterly indescribable, slurped up together through an extra fat straw. Yum.
Back at the guesthouse, nearing 10pm, I decided that Yoga must be too busy working (there was a big premier for the luggage brand Tumi at the mall yesterday that he had to cover for the paper he is a feature's writer for) to make it over and was about to head for a shower and to bed. I had been out in the courtyard eating juicy rambutan (related to lychees, with a bright fuscia shell and long, soft spines like overgrown velcro) and chatting with the staff for an hour or so. But I got distracted by Men in Black playing on HBO (2 friendly British guys were already watching it, and I do love old movies on the road...) and so sat down for the film. The main room is much cooler than my room, so it was a nice winding down. And lucky I did, since just 10 minutes or so from the end Yoga appeared in his studly threads from the premier, apologetic about the lateness of the hour.
After chatting for an hour, sometime well after 11, we decided to go get some satay on the food street near the guesthouse. From lunch time on, dozens of carts set up shop and start charging locals and tourists alike exorbitant prices for mediocre food. But it's nearby and even exorbitantly priced food is still reasonable in Malaysia and I don't know what good Malaysian food is yet, so mediocre doesn't offend me. The chicken satay was great, the beef so-so (useful tip from Andrew, one of the guesthouse employees, 'it's not enough to have good meat - good meat with so-so sauce is just so-so satay...'), the sauce so-so. Yoga figured they bastardized it with a pinch of curry powder to make up for a lack of richness in the original ingredients. After the satay, deciding that we were both ravenous after all, we had 2 different kinds of fried noodles (fat, round ones stir-fried with greasy, black sauce loaded with bits of crispy-fried pork fat, and wide, flat ones cooked with meat and egg and seafood), bowls of sweetish amber liquid studded with barley pearls, quails egg, and bits of dried fruit, and tall glasses of 'chika' juice filled with long, black threads of noodle that looked, depending on your angle, like wriggling worms or somebody's hair. Fat and full, we finally groaned our way back to the guesthouse around 12:30 (so great to have a local to wander around with!!).
When I got back, everyone except Andrew was already in bed. He had taken the sofa apart and was busy cleaning the pieces. I had a nice, cold shower (you know it's hot when I like a cold shower!) and then went to bed. I was remarkably wide awake considering to my body it was 2:30 in the morning. Must have been all that deep-fried fat juicing me up (watching me scouring the plate for every morsel, Yoga declared in admiration 'a woman after my own heart!')! But I did eventually get to sleep, and slept absolutely soundly until a little after 7 this morning.
Since Andrew was still crashed out on the sofa when I came out (and indeed still is, snoring softly behind me), I decided to start with breakfast. Gana wasn't there, but a huge crowd of other regulars was. Everywhere I go, someone is happy to strike up an easy conversation. This morning it was a pleasant woman, who suggested I try the sugar-and-banana filled roti (also served with curry - HEAVENLY!!!!! The bananas, which are interspersed throughout the folded square of roti at regular intervals, are bright yellow and tangy-sweet, holding the griddle's heat long after the other ingredients, keeping the sugar crispy-melty. With the spicy curry on the side, the sweet-spicy, hot-cool intersection wakes up every one of your taste buds and makes them dance for joy) along with my tea. Cooking today was the old man's middle-aged son, who speaks better English than the old man and is a better cook. Which is saying something. His roti are so amazingly thin you can literally see through them before he bunches them up on the grill. When you tear them apart, they separate into crispy, tissue-fine layers that cradle the sauce all the way to your mouth. Just writing about it I am salivating all over again...might have to have one more when I finish this, before I set out on foot to Little India, China Town, and whatever else catches my eye.
It was awesome to just sit and watch what everyone ate and how they all interacted with each other. The woman said that she grew up in this neighbourhood and still works here, even though she lives somewhere else now. She's been eating the old man's food since she was a child. She confirmed what Gana said yesterday, that they have been open for '30 or 40 years'. She said all of the people there, except me of course, come every day and they all know little bits and pieces about each other. 20 or more people came and went in the hour or so that I sat there, most of them on their way to jobs that begin at 9am. She said a different crowd comes for lunch - people the breakfast set don't know. Everyone had their own regular drink, set in front of them without any obvious ordering that I could see (only a few people drank the kind of tea I again enjoyed...in fact, I think nearly everyone had something different. Hot, iced, coffee, chocolate, coffee-chocolate, milk tea, plain tea, sweet tea, juice...). Newspapers were passed around. Quiet conversations whispered easily around the edges. Plenty of speculation about me, which they were not afraid to test out to my face, in a playful and highly entertaining way. It felt like an old barber shop in American movies...like the one in Steel Magnolias. Fantastic.
And I haven't even mentioned the soft-boiled eggs...
And now it's after 10 and I want to do a few more things before I set out for the day. So I'd better go. After all, a whole city of food awaits me!
Stupid is not a good way to be when you are alone on the road. So I have learned to recognize the signs and am pretty good at mitigating them. My first line of defense (after the dried fruit snacks perpetually in my bag)...no matter how mediocre (and honestly, the food court food is far from mediocre), always have one go-to place that is easily accessible and which I know is reliable and then focus on it like it's the only edible thing on earth once I realize I have gone too long without sustenance (easy to do in a new city, full of interesting things to see and do). Malay noodles, here I come! Better make that an extra-large...
After the noodles I diversified my mall experience into drinkable dessert. If you ever get the chance, definitely try the 'Jade Love Jelly' at the Taiwan tea house. I have no idea what it was (other than so sweet that it made my stomach cramp), but it is truly exceptional. A tall glass loaded with transparent, barely-jelled fruit jelly, soaked in passion-fruit juice, and then doused with something thick and heavenly and utterly indescribable, slurped up together through an extra fat straw. Yum.
Back at the guesthouse, nearing 10pm, I decided that Yoga must be too busy working (there was a big premier for the luggage brand Tumi at the mall yesterday that he had to cover for the paper he is a feature's writer for) to make it over and was about to head for a shower and to bed. I had been out in the courtyard eating juicy rambutan (related to lychees, with a bright fuscia shell and long, soft spines like overgrown velcro) and chatting with the staff for an hour or so. But I got distracted by Men in Black playing on HBO (2 friendly British guys were already watching it, and I do love old movies on the road...) and so sat down for the film. The main room is much cooler than my room, so it was a nice winding down. And lucky I did, since just 10 minutes or so from the end Yoga appeared in his studly threads from the premier, apologetic about the lateness of the hour.
After chatting for an hour, sometime well after 11, we decided to go get some satay on the food street near the guesthouse. From lunch time on, dozens of carts set up shop and start charging locals and tourists alike exorbitant prices for mediocre food. But it's nearby and even exorbitantly priced food is still reasonable in Malaysia and I don't know what good Malaysian food is yet, so mediocre doesn't offend me. The chicken satay was great, the beef so-so (useful tip from Andrew, one of the guesthouse employees, 'it's not enough to have good meat - good meat with so-so sauce is just so-so satay...'), the sauce so-so. Yoga figured they bastardized it with a pinch of curry powder to make up for a lack of richness in the original ingredients. After the satay, deciding that we were both ravenous after all, we had 2 different kinds of fried noodles (fat, round ones stir-fried with greasy, black sauce loaded with bits of crispy-fried pork fat, and wide, flat ones cooked with meat and egg and seafood), bowls of sweetish amber liquid studded with barley pearls, quails egg, and bits of dried fruit, and tall glasses of 'chika' juice filled with long, black threads of noodle that looked, depending on your angle, like wriggling worms or somebody's hair. Fat and full, we finally groaned our way back to the guesthouse around 12:30 (so great to have a local to wander around with!!).
When I got back, everyone except Andrew was already in bed. He had taken the sofa apart and was busy cleaning the pieces. I had a nice, cold shower (you know it's hot when I like a cold shower!) and then went to bed. I was remarkably wide awake considering to my body it was 2:30 in the morning. Must have been all that deep-fried fat juicing me up (watching me scouring the plate for every morsel, Yoga declared in admiration 'a woman after my own heart!')! But I did eventually get to sleep, and slept absolutely soundly until a little after 7 this morning.
Since Andrew was still crashed out on the sofa when I came out (and indeed still is, snoring softly behind me), I decided to start with breakfast. Gana wasn't there, but a huge crowd of other regulars was. Everywhere I go, someone is happy to strike up an easy conversation. This morning it was a pleasant woman, who suggested I try the sugar-and-banana filled roti (also served with curry - HEAVENLY!!!!! The bananas, which are interspersed throughout the folded square of roti at regular intervals, are bright yellow and tangy-sweet, holding the griddle's heat long after the other ingredients, keeping the sugar crispy-melty. With the spicy curry on the side, the sweet-spicy, hot-cool intersection wakes up every one of your taste buds and makes them dance for joy) along with my tea. Cooking today was the old man's middle-aged son, who speaks better English than the old man and is a better cook. Which is saying something. His roti are so amazingly thin you can literally see through them before he bunches them up on the grill. When you tear them apart, they separate into crispy, tissue-fine layers that cradle the sauce all the way to your mouth. Just writing about it I am salivating all over again...might have to have one more when I finish this, before I set out on foot to Little India, China Town, and whatever else catches my eye.
It was awesome to just sit and watch what everyone ate and how they all interacted with each other. The woman said that she grew up in this neighbourhood and still works here, even though she lives somewhere else now. She's been eating the old man's food since she was a child. She confirmed what Gana said yesterday, that they have been open for '30 or 40 years'. She said all of the people there, except me of course, come every day and they all know little bits and pieces about each other. 20 or more people came and went in the hour or so that I sat there, most of them on their way to jobs that begin at 9am. She said a different crowd comes for lunch - people the breakfast set don't know. Everyone had their own regular drink, set in front of them without any obvious ordering that I could see (only a few people drank the kind of tea I again enjoyed...in fact, I think nearly everyone had something different. Hot, iced, coffee, chocolate, coffee-chocolate, milk tea, plain tea, sweet tea, juice...). Newspapers were passed around. Quiet conversations whispered easily around the edges. Plenty of speculation about me, which they were not afraid to test out to my face, in a playful and highly entertaining way. It felt like an old barber shop in American movies...like the one in Steel Magnolias. Fantastic.
And I haven't even mentioned the soft-boiled eggs...
And now it's after 10 and I want to do a few more things before I set out for the day. So I'd better go. After all, a whole city of food awaits me!
posted by Roberta | 11:13 AM
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