EatingAsia

George Town's Great Disappearing (And Reappearing) Chapati

This place we would have posted long ago, had it not pulled a 'now you see it, now you don't'. It's a hoppin' chapati shack just up the street from our favorite lor mee stall in George Town, Penang. We stumbled upon it back in June while doing some street food research for an article (not out yet).

Nasi kandar, rice and dishes served on banana leaf, and tandoor chicken served with naan are easily found just a block away, in the city's Little India. Stalls specializing in hand-patted chapati are not as plentiful. In addition to this place, called Maj, there's one up the street. But it's Maj that consistently packs in the crowds.

 

After that initial visit we returned to Maj a week later, only to find its metal doors rolled down and adjacent corrugated metal roof-protected 'dining area' devoid of tables. This scenario repeated itself on our next eight or so visits. By mid-September - Ramadan already - we'd pretty given up hope.

 

Then yesterday, after two breakfasts (one being hands-down George Town's best nasi kandar - details to come) we rounded the corner and Maj was open and humming, as if it had never ceased operations at all. After rubbing our eyes to make sure it wasn't a mirage, we hurried over and grabbed a table.

The atmosphere in the dining lean-to was festive. Apparently we weren't the only ones who'd been missing those chapati.

 

Like many eateries in George Town Maj has been in the same family for over fifty years. Its thin, supple chapati - patted, rolled out, and griddled at the rate of one every fifty seconds - are huge in wheaty flavor and fragrance. They wear a few black blisters and a heavenly toastiness from just enough time on a hot tava.

We could eat them by the dozen with no accompaniment at all. But it would be a shame to miss out on Maj's chicken curry, which is just spicy enough and the teeniest bit sweet, with heavy cinnamon overtones. The bird is perfectly cooked; even white meat pieces are tender and very moist.

Maj's owner continues to insist, as he did on our first visit three months ago, that the place is open every day except Sunday -- though he does acknowledge that 'sometimes we close'. So I'm afraid you'll have to take your chances. But if you find Maj's open, you've hit the jackpot.

Gerai Makanan dan Minuman Maj, Lebuh Ah Quee at the corner of Lorong Pitt, 7am-6pm. Closed Sunday.

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Dish

Shoot, maybe we should have ordered that instead! (Click four arrows to enlarge to full screen.)

I suppose we've all, at some point in our respective dining-out histories, suffered from food envy, that nagging feeling that your neighbors ordered more skillfully than you did.

But until Dave showed me this sequence of photos I was under the impression that only we were uncouth enough to crane our necks after a server delivering a particularly tempting plate of food to a nearby table.

The dish in question is this, a beautiful silver pomfret 'Teochew style' -- steamed with tomatoes, black mushrooms, shredded pickled mustard, sour plums, and a few paper-thin slices of three-story pork, and served garnished with cilantro leaves and slivered scallion.

It's a dish we've eaten elsewhere, but never enjoyed as much as we did the full-on tart version lovingly prepared at Teik Seng in George Town, Penang. It epitomizes, we think, the restaurant's approach to every dish it serves: top-notch ingredients, no holds barred when it comes to flavorings.

(That bacon candy was, by the way, siew yoke or roasted pork, not barbecued pork as we'd thought. We continue to wonder how Teik Seng coaxed chewy stickiness from the dish, so different in taste and texture from another version served at a restaurant two blocks over.)

The morning of the day that we ate that fish we found the uncle who busses tables and delivers drinks at Teik Seng seated there behind a pile of French beans, carefully snipping the notched end off of each one. A few hours later we enjoyed those beans (they aren't on the menu; it pays to ask about specials before you order) stir-fried with garlic, minced and chopped pork (just a little bit of each, more for flavor than for protein), tiny dried shrimp, and a few fresh prawns. The crunch of the beans contrasted with the chew of the miniature crustaceans, while the freshness of crisp-tender beans balanced the meat's fat.

On other occasions we've enjoyed Teik Seng's prawns cooked with tamarind, candied and caramelized in spots but still strikingly sour, just the way we like them (I eat them heads, shells, and all);

ethereally light, nearly greaseless deep-fried squid, tender slices wrapped in crackly-crunchy cloaks;

and a mixture of seafood (the generically named 'sea bass', fish maw, crab, prawns, squid) stewed in a claypot, redolent of huatiao jiu (Chinese sweet 'yellow' rice wine) and juices seeped from the seafood.

Teik Seng's preparations -- such as this asam fish ('fish curry' on the menu, but it's your classic Penang-style spicy and tamarind-soured fish stew with tomatoes and okra; we love the gravy that's thick with bits of lemongrass and chili-hot enough to make us break out in a sweat)

and these potato leaves stir-fried with sambal belacan (chili sauce made with belacan, or shrimp paste) and plump, briny prawns

are not always pretty, but they do always leave us almost deliriously happy.

Until, that is, we get a look at what the folks at the next table are eating.

Kedai Makanan Teik Seng, Carnavon Street between Chulia and Campbell, George Town, Penang. 12 noon-2:30p and 5:30-8:30p. Closed on Tuesdays.

Lor Mee, Oh My!

These two men are tucking into what is, if not the finest lor mee in George Town, probably the most appreciated. It's dished up six days a week at a somewhat obscure kopitiam called Lean Thye. Catch it if you can; the stall opens at 7am and is usually sold out by 9:30 or 10.

This was another happy accidental find, spotted one morning as, dog on leash, we rounded the corner onto Lebuh Ah Quee from Beach Street. Seven thirty and every table spilling out the front of the shop and onto the sidewalk next door was filled, the young dudes working the stall moving fast as lightening to fill orders (the above photo was taken just as they sold out, around 9:45a).

Dave and I nodded to each other, each thinking the same thing: 'We've got to check this place out before we leave town.'

Return we did, yesterday morning after feeding the dog and tending to the puppies (still homeless, by the way). We shared a table with two gentlemen who've been eating the dish for eons and from this particular stall for 'forty-five years or more', they said. How nice to learn from them that although the original seller recently retired, his sons have stepped in to carry on the business.

Lor mee is most simply described as yellow noodles in corn starch-thickened dark gravy, but of course there's more to the dish than that.

The gravy poured over this bowl of pasta is so thick it might almost be described as 'gloppy' -- but when it hits the noodles it thins to a perfect consistency, not too heavy but thick enough to really coat and cling to the pasta. Some lor mee gravies have a slight but appealing fishiness about them, but not this one, which is robustly meaty with an intriguing hint of star anise and cinammon. The barest flecks of egg are visible on its shiny surface.

Consider noodles (these guys mix mostly yellow mee with a few strands of rice vermicelli) and gravy the taste and texture 'base' of the dish.There's the dusting of crispy browned shallots that goes on top, then optional additions, which are listed on the white board above the prep station: sliced pork, soy-cooked duck eggs, and three-layer pork (lean meat, fat, and crispy skin).

Diners add further flavor table side in the form of fresh garlic paste and ground chili sauce. In KL and environs black vinegar often also graces the table, while at this stall tartness and heat come in one package -- the chili sauce has a sour vinegared edge.

We love that this stall offers a choice of not only 'small' and 'large' portions, but 'double XL' as well. With the specialties of other stalls to sample before we headed back to KL, we opted to share a small. It went down fast and easy, and saw us fighting for the last bits from the bottom of the bowl This is comfort food of the highest order: full-bodied in flavor, texturally easy to love (and a bit indulgent if you opt for duck egg and three-layer pork, as we did). A 'real shoveler', as Dave would say.

No wonder this lor mee stall is still going strong after almost half a century. May its new operators enjoy as much success as their father did. Long live lor mee at Lean Thye!

Lor mee stall, Lean Thye, Lebuh Ah Quee about half a block from Beach Street, Georgetown, Penang. 7am till it's sold out, usually by 9:30 or 10am. Closed Sundays and the occasional odd day (noted on the white board above the prep station). RM 2.50 small / 3.00 large / 4.00 double XL. Pork and duck egg RM 1.00 each.

 

Bacon Candy

This may not be the prettiest pork dish you've ever seen, but I'll wager it's among the most delicious.

Teik Seng is a little outdoor spot about half a block from George Town's Campbell Street Market. It's open for lunch and dinner, just 5 1/2 hours a day, and is always absolutely packed. We walked by maybe two dozen times before finally making it here for a meal.

In the last five days we've eaten at Teik Seng three times. It's a family-run joint, and the food is simply superb, every dish made with care and not a small amount of pride. Unless you come right at opening, expect to wait for a table. Once you've ordered, expect to wait for your food. But the wait is worth it, and the food is always served with a smile.

There's lots to write about Teik Seng, and I'll do so in in good time. But this, perhaps the restaurant's 'star' dish, deserves a post all it's own.

On the menu it's 'double-cooked' pork. On the plate, it's char siew, or Chinese barbecued pork belly, sliced into matchsticks and stir-fried. A well-made Malayisan-style char siew is, in its own right, something special: smoky and fatty, laquered with a sweet (but not too sweet) sticky glaze.

Take that already smoky char siew and expose it to a seasoned hot wok and you add another layer of smoke, in the form of wok hei. The glaze caramelizes even more, sticky bits turn crunchy, and some layers of fat begin to render while others crisp. Opt for an addition of chopped cili padi (fiery small fresh green chilies) and you get spare little pinpricks of heat as counterpoint to opulent meaty sweetness.

Teik Seng's double-cooked pork is the best char siew done one better. It's bacon turned confection - Bacon Candy, essentially.

Like any sweet, it's not something to be eaten every day. No matter how much we'd like to.

Kedai Makanan Teik Seng, Carnavon Street between Chulia and Campbell, George Town, Penang. 12 noon-2:30p and 5:30-8:30p. Closed on Tuesdays.