Location: Air Itam
Price: Small - RM2.50 | Big - RM3.00
Contact: Mrs Ong - 012 408 8152 / Miss Ong - 012 407 3152
Stall Operation: 0800 - 1200 (7 days a week)
Parking convenience: Very Bad (You better park at Kek Lok Si's nearby car park and walk)
Hygiene: Fair
Direction:
Comes from Chung Ling High School direction, take Kek Lok Si route to head on. When it comes to a T-junction that leads you to Kek Lok Si, turn right to Market Road (Jalan Pasar). Look for parking space. Once you park your car, WALK (not drive, ok) against the traffic along Market Road back to the T-junction.
Turn right and go opposite to follow the traffic. Once pass by the small bridge, you see another small road on your left. Turn left and check out the aunties who sell curry mee sitting on small bench.
* Would like to special thank to DC and Jessica who brought me to this hunt :-)
Really OLD Style
The first sight when I look at the stall, there is NO stall. Out of my expectation, the stall owners (should be co-owners), mostly age 60 and above, sitting on single person bench. The noodles and "bihun", bean-sprout and the soup-base container all "sitting" on the floor. Beside the container, I can see a plastic bag of black-woody-stuff, yeah lar... it's charcoal, bro.
Preparation
Team Work
Wah lao eh (Hokkien dialect verbal expression for surprise, just in case you are not from Penang)! People from West shouts - My God - over here, we only call for dad. Enough side-tracking topic.
Charcoal smell when I stepped in and sat down. This reminded me my childhood smell vividly. Sat beside the aunties, behind me still have another 3 charcoal stoves. You can imagine the free sauna environment I indeed "enjoy" much during that moment.
Same Old Taste
Soup
Self Service
It's pretty hard to find a real old taste to describe. I may not guarantee when I say good taste, the rest of readers who following this blog will raise their legs to fully agree. It's still based on personal preference.
What I meant same old taste - when the noodles plus soup enter your mouth, the taste that stimulate your taste bud will quickly transmit its nerve signal to your brain AND most important thing, that nerve signal suddenly "open" your hidden old memory which reside in your memory database. Again, enough grandma story.
Soup-based is consists of coconut milk mixture with other ingredients. Reasonably sweet but not artificial type. Surprisingly, I didn't see any mint leave when served. The chilli, for me, not so spicy until I able to sniff. One thing I can be sure - the chilli is not over stir-fried. Probably this is the difference from other curry mee stall I'm interested.
The Inheritors
Friendly and talkative aunties (we normally respect lady who is in age forty and above, we won't call old lady, because I'm old biscuit too!) were laughing out loud, when I brought out my camera to capture them. Luckily they didn't have much time to stop and do some make-up :-P 60 plus years time just flew swiftly... "I remembered when we started this curry mee selling, the tree beside us was small and short" said one of the aunty. Get two guys to hug the tree, you can imagine how big is the tree.
I'm quite happy to notice there are two youngsters helped out during the selling. This means traditional old food won't just "extinct" like that.
those shots are great! Is that from a new gadget?
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot Allie :-) No new gadget, in fact, old manual len - Nikkor AiS :-P
ReplyDeletethanks so much....i m tat "miss ong" u mentioned above....n...those shots are really great!!
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot Miss Ong Sun Sun for visiting the post. I'm very glad to know this curry mee :-) If my time allows, I prefer to have longer while to stay and capture more beautiful moment, of course the curry mee 2 bowls :-) Keep up this good traditional food :-)
ReplyDeleteGreat post with so many lovely shots.
ReplyDeleteThanks CK :-) The traditional food is simply beautiful and tasty!
ReplyDeleteWill find one day to try it. Looks delicious.
ReplyDeleteExcellent photos :) And I will definitely try to look for the curry mee when I am down in Penang again :D
ReplyDeleteThanks KM & Nicholas :-) Old taste curry mee :-)
ReplyDeleteI was there last month. Pretty good stuff. Nice to see the old ladies happily cooking up the food.
ReplyDeleteThanks for leaving comment. I do hope they can pass down the cooking skill to next generation to sustain this business. Have great holiday soon!
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