Motormouth From Ipoh – Asian Food & Travel Blog

This article was originally published in The Malay Mail Online. Read it HERE.

Right smack in the heart of commercialization, fairly strategic in terms of location yet somewhat removed from the cold, lifeless brick and mortar businesses and an extensive colony of residential homes, is this new village (kampong baru in Bahasa Malaysia) named Sungai Way in Selangor.

When I first wandered around the neighbourhood, it surprised me that this area still exists within the realms of Petaling Jaya, wedged between areas marked for development. The atmosphere is entirely different from its more commercialized counterparts; relatively chaotic with narrow lanes suited for one-way traffic, single storey houses built almost within arm’s length of one another (a tad exaggerated, but you get the picture) and the multitude of foreign workers happily strolling across the labyrinths of Sungai Way all decked in generic uniforms past 5pm every day.

I would not have thought of coming here for a food hunt, despite the overwhelming curiosity ignited by the sight of stalls, eateries housed in home compounds, authentic Indonesian fare prepared and served by ladies from the same country, and the wet market with a food court on the upper level. I was initially intimidated by the neighbourhood; the startling number of foreigners and haphazard traffic after working hours did not make me think of Sungai Way as being an ideal neighbourhood for food walks. Read the rest of this entry »

 Claypot Bak Kut Teh @ Ah Sang in Sungei Way, PJ; an old neighbourhood with an astounding number of foreign workers residing within; plus a few good finds that you might not have heard of.

 But still … Ah Sang Bak Kut Teh deserves the compliments and respect for doing what they still love and believe in after all these years.

A bunch of my ex-colleagues brought me here two years ago. The first bak kut teh restaurant in KL/PJ that managed to make a lasting impression …. not that I have been to many anyway.

Reservation is almost always a must during lunch hours, but you can expect almost God-like speed in churning out pots after pots of the famed Hokkien-style herbal broth laced with chunks of pork (almost every part imaginable) here at Ah Sang.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hong Bak. Or at least that was what I remembered from our meal way back in the first quarter of 2009! A Hokkien classic of braised pork belly (very fat, so beware … or throw caution to the wind!) served with interesting blocks of ‘kan sui gou’ aka alkaline kueh.

And can you believe that I have been itching to write about Hua Xing since April 2009? Yeah, this draft was left untouched; a solemn state of procrastination to the max.

When Motormouth loses his touch, it’s obvious. Since coming back from Ipoh; there’s this very urge to write more on food from Ipoh. There were few surprises along the way; in particular the fabulous old-timers that me and my family have been eating all these years; yet I never bothered to write a proper entry on them. But the imminent shift in the pace of life in KL compared to Ipoh rendered me almost incapacitated.

Catching up on deadlines for articles, screening through the archive for good finds OR at least something that caters to my tastebud (and I’m sure after following my blog for some time, you would have known what I like and what I don’t …), and proper time management on the whole calls for precedence; before I got swallowed by this wave of the rat race.

Clearly, this eatery is no amateur when it comes to serving the most authentic Hokkien classics; with a fused notion of Canton style cooking thrown in for good measure. (By the way, the bottom right was a glass of delightful sweet potato or pumpkin drink with barley)

It’s Friday now. And a good 9 months since this draft was first initiated. The second visit to Hua Xing happened because Sungei Way is a short distance away from where I am working now. Guess this won’t be the last trip there; judging from the overall favourable reviews from the others.

Let’s see what have I tried from both visits, and what you should NEVER missed ….. Read the rest of this entry »