COMMENTARY, March 22 — When your hometown has become a tourist hotspot, it’s easy for your friends from other states or abroad to make quick assumptions about what you did growing up, what dialects you speak, even what your favourite foods are.
That last one can be a tricky matter because taste is subjective; everyone has their own preferences and we differ from one another. As humans, we vary like individual snowflakes.
But even we ourselves often cannot lay claim to a single, consistent whole: we contain multitudes... of moods, and to go with these, multitudes of foods to suit each temperament or tempest.
What we favour may change with the very weather.
So it is educational and heartening to commiserate with a friend who feels the way you do. The very chagrin when another — someone who is day-tripping in your hometown — informs you what your favourite food is.
(How definitive. How disagreeably so!)
So colour me surprised when I realised that one of my most trusted foodie friends, the aptly nicknamed Ipoh Boy, has never taken me out for kai see hor fun when I visited him at his hometown.
(It appears I am just as guilty of making assumptions.)
Ipoh is more than kai see hor fun, you see, he tells me. Indeed, he has introduced me to slurp-worthy hor hee and that kopitiam staple, char kway teow full of wok hei and waxed sausages.
And these exemplary dishes aren’t even his favourite noodles in Ipoh.
No, that honour belongs to a bowl of pork noodles at a shop located along Jalan Theatre in Ipoh Town. Ipoh Boy tells me this isn’t their first shop; their original stall was in a kopitiam in Ipoh Garden South.
The Ipoh Town branch just happens to be more conveniently located for my friend. Which makes sense, for we are sensible creatures. Why travel the extra distance?
When we are the locals, we tend to patronise whichever is both good and nearby; tourists and daytrippers are the ones willing to make pilgrimages to far-flung corners of our hometowns that we wouldn’t even consider. They have already crossed state lines to get here; what’s a little bit more?
The shop Ipoh Boy brings me to is called CY Noodles, the CY standing for “Cong Yin” — the name of the patriarch of the Wong family who runs the business. There can be a queue sometimes, but Ipoh Boy assures me it’s well worth the wait.
The soup here is slowly simmered over the course of an entire day, to bring out the flavour-rich fats and collagen from pork bones. You can always tell when a broth is hastily boiled and when there is much loving care put in.
We enjoy a cup of Ipohan coffee while we wait for our orders to arrive — a dark, robust kopi O and a sweet, milky kopi. Then the bowls are presented with a flourish, or perhaps we’re imagining the fanfare in our minds, eager from waiting: one with thin rice vermicelli, the other without noodles.
The large, tender slices of pork; the creamy slivers of liver; the unexpected tubes of bamboo pith, still slightly crunchy; and above all, that long-simmered broth, full of that savoury, porky umami we crave.
What a magnificent bowl!
I tell Ipoh Boy that I must return the favour when he visits my hometown of Melaka. He smiles and tells me he loves the Nyonya laksa there. Ah.
Melaka is more than Nyonya laksa, I tell my Ipohan friend. And there are plenty of divine dining experiences beyond the tourist-afflicted stretch of Jonker Street, possibly more so if you ask someone who grew up here.
Beyond the hipster cafés with repurposed detritus turned artisanal furnishing, there are places seemingly only locals know. Spots that we would wake up early for, even on weekends.
I remember my father dragging me to Tengkera, further north from the town centre, where he would coach other kids in badminton and reward my patience with my favourite breakfast. This was to be found – can still be found – at the shop opposite the badminton court there.
I say shop, but it’s really a converted house where the proprietor would cook the noodles on the front porch. Tables and chairs, the plastic variety surrounded her pushcart. It’s a decidedly no-frills affair, as it should be.
Hoo Khiew Prawn Cracker Noodles, also fondly known as the Tengkera Noodles due to its location, remains my favourite noodles in Melaka, even more so than my other favourites, an oil-slicked bowl of yee kiao or a plate of spicy mee kahwin in the neighbourhood where I grew up.
What I desired most of the time as a kid was a steaming hot bowl of these prawn crackers and fish ball noodles.
This is what I would love to share with my Ipohan friend: first, the generous toppings of crunchy deep-fried prawn crackers and “QQ” (meaning extra bouncy) fish balls; a greasy layer of crispy fried shallots and the oil they come in; hot, savoury broth that might smack of MSG but tastes just like childhood umami to me.
I would advise my friend to eschew the thick yellow noodles or the thin strands of bee hoon and instead go for the koay teow, the way most regulars do. The silken-smooth flat rice noodles offer the perfect slurp and chew ratio, in my opinion.
The best part is simply allowing some of the prawn crackers and fried shallots to soak in the broth; the now soggy crackers taste more like the soup and the soup tastes more like the crackers. It’s a deepening of the layers of flavours and of our relationship with this perfect bowl, however long it may last — the span of a single, memorable meal.
For that is what these treasured noodles are for my friend and me, a boy from Ipoh and another from Melaka: cherished memories that we can still return to and savour, hopefully with the people we care about the most.
What we favour may change with the very weather. But some things last a lifetime.
CY Noodles
26-9, Jalan Theatre, Taman Jubilee, Ipoh
Open daily 7:30am-4pm
Hoo Khiew Prawn Cracker Noodles
345, Jalan Tengkera, Melaka
Open daily 6am-2pm
