EatingAsia

My Husband Went to Medan and All I Got Was This Lousy Buah

A couple of weeks ago Dave spent a few days in Medan. In addition to working hard and eating very well, he managed to carve out a few early morning hours to spend roaming the city's main market. It's a good one, he says, sprawling and colorful, bustling and noisy. Just the sort of place to get a photographer's creative juices flowing.

One of the more interesting pieces of produce he encountered is this pink, slightly hairy, knobby fruit.

It's a buah assam (sour fruit) of some sort, used, he was told, as a souring agent in sambals (chile 'dips') and soups. We've never seen anything like it, and we don't know its Indonesian name. Dave purchased a specimen and packed it back to Kuala Lumpur so that I could have a gander.

The fruit's individual segments are easily separated from its woody core. Cut open, they reveal a whitish, almost translucent flesh studded with tiny black seeds. The flesh is tart as tamarind, but fragrant enough to remind one of mangosteen. The seeds seem edible.

But - what is it? And how exactly is it used? Are the seeds eaten or separated from the flesh. Is it found elsewhere in Southeast Asia? Perhaps an Indonesian or other southeast Asian reader can fill us in. If not, we should have some answers in a few weeks as, happily, we're headed to northern Sumatra, including Medan, come Chinese New Year.

Milk Into Gold

Loh mee is plenty filling, but after a meal like that something sweet seems right.

In Serendah, a speck of a town somewhere between Ulu Yam and Rawang, we speed past a hand-lettered sign advertising 'barfi'. The shop behind it is simply too cute to pass by, so we prevail (OK, I prevail) upon Dave to make a U-turn.

Pall Cova Punjabi shop has been supplying Serendah and surrounds with Indian sweets since 1967. It's a couple of days before New Year's Eve, 2006, and Krishen Lal has already repainted his wooden display case to mark its fortieth birthday.

There's lots on offer here - pall khua, ladoo, halwa, jelebi - but the barfi is fresh (the shop smells like milk) and, though it's not our favorite Indian sweet, we feel compelled to give it a try.

Mr. Lal makes it himself in a kuali worn matte black with use, on a single gas burner in a small room at the back of the shop. It's just fresh cow milk and sugar, he says, nothing else. Cooked for two hours, the ingredients meld into a sweet rich and dairy-ful enough to make a Punjabi swoon. Cut into squares and cooled, the barfi hardens but melts like butter once it hits the tongue.

Also extremely sublime - perhaps even more so than the barfi - are this man's Indian 'donuts', dark brown and glossy and unusually heady with the scent and flavor of cloves and cardamom.

Pall Cova punjabi sweets shop, No. 14A Main Road , Serendah. Specialists in wedding and festival sweets. Special orders welcome. Tel. 012-3547778.

Better Burmese

In an alley leading from the bowels of Kuala Lumpur's Petaling Street wet market you'll find well-established stalls offering stellar examples of curry mee, yong taufu, chee cheong fun, and Burmese stir-fried sour vegetable.

Yes, you read right - there's a wee haven of Burmese delights smack dab in the middle of Chinatown. Here, newcomer-to-KL Yeechaw, her husband, and her brother serve Burmese dishes that dazzle with their bright, fresh flavors.

Yeechaw and her family are Mon (one of Burma's four main ethnological groups) from Mawlamyaing (Moulmein), a coastal town in southeastern Burma, the long, narrow piece of the country that snakes down the western edge of the Andaman Sea. Though the Mon have their own cuisine (examples of which, by the way, can be sampled on Koh Kret, a small, car-free island reachable by boat from Bangkok), Yeechaw mostly cooks up dishes familiar to all Burmese.

Though we enjoyed the delicious food and laid-back, welcoming ambience at Shan Restaurant behind Kota Raya shopping center, Yeechaw's food lies on a whole other level. It's said that the best Burmese food is found in private homes (which is probably why travelers to the country complain so about the fare), and that is what you'll find here: rustic home cooking, the type your mom might prepare ... if she were Burmese.

Yeechaw offers a range of ready-made curries and veggy dishes. We started with chin baung jaw (above), sour vegetable (chin baung ywet) stir-fried ('jaw') with tomatoes and chilies, among other ingredients. This delicious version is saucier than the one at Shan restaurant, but still very sour and fishy, with a hefty chile kick.

Gazuhn ywet jaw (stir-fried water spinach, aka morning glory) would appear to be a rather pedestrian dish. But it bears minimal traces of oil, retains plenty of crunch and vegetal flavor, and has the teeniest nibs of cooked egg clinging to it. This dish is so 'green' tasting and and delicate that it's really more of a salad than a stir-fry.

Drumsticks, the elongated, green-striped, and slightly ridged pods of a tree (Moringa oleifera) native to the Indian Subcontinent, are a common sight on the tables of Indian produce sellers at Malaysian markets. Here, pieces are fried with slices of fatty pork belly, chilies and other spices, and a hint of tomato. The skin of the vegetable, which has a pleasant, concentrated-summer-squash sort of flavor, is tough enough to be inedible. Squeeze the soft flesh out by running a piece between your teeth. Depite the extra labor required to eat this dish - called dundaluhn jaw (stir-fried dundaluhn thee, drumstick vegetable) - it was one of our favorites.

Ngar oo hin, fish eggs in a mild Indian-ish curry sauce, ('ngar oo' = fish eggs, 'hin' = a sauced dish), is more meaty and less fishy than one might expect. Once cooked, the eggs have a sausage-like firmness. Hiding amongst the chunks of ginger and garlic that populate the sauce are the tiniest dried fish I've ever encountered. The occasional 'pop' of one between the teeth releases a lovely hint of the sea.

Yeechaw will prepare her khauk swe thohk (noodle salad) as spicy - or not - as you like. For this dish, cool thick mee are tossed with a sauce of chile in oil, sesame, garlic and ginger, slivered lemongrass, and other spices. Thin strips of fried tofu, cucumber, cabbage slivers, and red shallot rings add crunch. This heat-beating dish is served with a bowl of light, shrimpy broth (opening photo).

Losa is her comforting take on Malaysian laksa, in which thin rice noodles crowd a bowl of a rich, cloudy fish broth. Slivered cabbage, long beans, firm tofu, peanuts, and coriander are meant to be stirred under at the last minute so they stay crunchy. An especially nice touch here are the silky, softened onion quarters that have taken on a delectable sweetness after long cooking in the broth.

No meal here would be complete without a plate of ulam (vegetables), to dip into Yeechaw's balachaung (belacan) jaw, aka ngapi jaw yay jo ('ngapi' = Burmese shrimp paste). Dominated (in a good way) by a raw, primal fishiness, this balachaung is closer in spirit to a northern Thai naam prik (literally 'chili water' - a dip for veggies) made with bplaa raa, or to a doctored bowl of Thai or Malaysian budu, than to a Malaysian sambal belacan. Chunky with garlic and incredibly hot minced chilies, it will appeal only to the most hardcore of diners.

Those who decide to indulge will want to ask that their plate of ulam include a few pieces of danyin thee, known in Malaysia as jering, and in Indonesia as jengkol. The pods of the tree Archidendron jiringa, found throughout Peninsular Malaysia, and in parts of Indonesia, Thailand and - I now know - Burma, are soft and greenish when young, firmer and encased in a hard, reddish-brown 'shell' when ripe. Blanched to reduce their unmistakeable (and, to some, offensive) odor, they taste a bit like chestnuts. A seasonal treat in Burma, they are happily available year-round in KL.   

Yeechaw no doubt has many more tricks up her sleeve than we were able to sample on this one visit; she continued to prepare dishes for her display as we ate, and it was only upon spying the noodle salad in front of a Burmese at the neighboring table that we became aware of its existence. Language is no problem here - a primary school teacher in her native Burma, Yeechaw speaks good English.

Three months after renting the stall, she says business is 'OK'. Most of her customers are Burmese or foreign tourists who stumble upon it whilst wandering Chinatown.  Anyone intrigued by the possibility of sampling Burmese dishes unaltered to local tastes should head on down to Petaling Street soonest.

Thanks to EatingAsia reader and Burma native meemalee for her help with getting the dish names right in romanization.

Myanmar Mon Food stall, alley off of food court inside Petaling Street market, Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur. About 11am-830pm.

Update, August 2007: This stall has closed! In fact, all of the Burmese vendors manning the row of stalls here are gone. No word on relocation. A true loss to Burmese food fans in KL.

The Dog Ate My Blogwork

Literally.

We've been meaning to post on these delectable baked buns since we stumbled upon them in Chinatown around New Year. That day we bought a sampling of goodies from this tiny stall and ate most of them in the car, but held aside one of these shiny beauties for later. We wrapped it up and set it on the counter, planning to sample it around cocktail hour. But our voracious rottweiler mix mutt - who can smell a month-old piece of meat from a mile away and would probably eat cardboard if it were painted to look like cat poop (fellow dog owners, you know what I mean) - got to it first.

Two weeks later we found ourselves in the area again and bought another. Wiser for experience, we ate it on the street, then and there. It's a char siew bao (BBQ pork bun), but with a twist: the meaty filling is studded with what we believe are lotus seeds. The combination makes for an agreeably lighter bao than your average all-meat version. Beyond that, this vendor's char siew stuffing hits just the right notes of meat and sweet, smoky and porky.

The lotus seed-pocked interior invites documenting, so we held off on sharing this treat until we could get back to the stall, bring a bun home, cut it open, get out the reflector, and set up the tripod.

Well, this past Sunday we got as far as bringing it home. We placed it on the kitchen counter - carefully positioning it right up against the wall, as far from counter lip as possible and well out of reach of the hound. And went to our respective offices to tend to other tasks.

An bit later, lunch digested enough have created a void in our bellies that would be well serviced by a half bao each, we went downstairs to retrieve it ... and found nothing but a piece of plastic wrap on the floor.

This bao is apparently so good that it drove our pretty old, incredibly lazy, exercise-shunning dog to heretofore unknown physical feats.

Of course, you may not wish to trust the culinary opinions of an undiscerning dog. But trust us. This is one beautiful bao.

Char siew bao stall, Jalan Hang Lekir close to the corner of Jalan Petaling (near the longan juice stall). This stall also sells Malay kuih, Shanghai char siew buns (log-like shape, delicious but lotus seed-free char siew filling), honey buns (nothing exciting here), and kaya puffs (wonderful crisp, flaky pastry but a filling a bit too sweet for our taste).

Melaka. One Meal. Where?

Eveningish. Tomorrow. You know what we like. Suggest before 2:30pm Friday, Malaysia time.

Hands Off the Night Market! (Warning: Rant Ahead)

A couple of Sundays ago we got in the car and headed, as we often do around 4:30 on the last afternoon of the weekend, to the pasar malam (night market) to put together the makings of a dinner.

Sometimes we hit the market at TTDI - we favor it for its size and the variety of items on offer, for its excellent fresh seafood selection, and for the putu piring vendors (though we haven't seen them lately) who stuff their rice flour fluffies with a delectably smoky and sticky type of gula Melaka (palm sugar). But Bangsar is closer to home, so often we end up there. By now we've memorized the layout of the market and can head straight for our favorite vendors.

We arrived to find the market moved a couple blocks down from its usual spot directly behind Bangsar Village Shopping Center to a smaller street. It felt crowded and unorganized, and looked different. What was with the color-coordinated canopies, replacing the red, yellow, and green umbrellas that to me say 'Here is a Malaysian wet market'? There seemed to be more prepared foods on offer than at the old location, and fewer vegetable, fruit, and seafood vendors. Where was the huge Indian produce stall with the uber-fresh, springy herbs and soft, squeezable limes (not easy to find in KL!), run by a staff quick to smile? Where was the guy who offers 3 boxes of Cameroon Highlands strawberries for 10 ringgit, and the small-time fish seller with his single styrofoam cooler of John Dory or salmon?

Little did I know that we were witnessing progress. It seems, according to an article yesterday in the Star newspaper (which for some reason I can't locate on the site), that the relocation of the market was at the behest of Bangsar business owners and members of the Bangsar Baru Residents' Association. The Chairman of the latter was quick to point out his sensitivity to the cultural significance of the market ('We are not against the night market as it is part of Malaysian culture...') but pointed out that it created traffic problems that 'inconvenience[d]' the community.

Oh, puh-lease!

First, might the fact that a huge, city block-wide shopping center which dwarfs the rest of the neighborhood is about to open alongside the market's old location have something to do with the move?

Setting aside the truth that what KL - and Bangsar - needs least is another mall, is this market, which had been in it's old location for going on two decades (thanks SW for that info) years (well, for 1.5 years at least, as long as we've lived here), really such a burden for Bangsar business owners? Devi's Corner (a restaurant also set alongside the market), for one, is packed every Sunday, even during market time. I used to see weary families of expats stopping in at Madame Kwan's for a refreshment when the heat and bustle of the market got to be too much for them. Now really -- when we say 'Bangsar business owners' had a problem with the market, exactly which business owners do we mean? And why, after so many years, is it such a problem now? Might it be that relocation of the market has been in the cards all along, ever since ground broke on the Coffee Bean-anchored monstrosity that's risen in Bangsar's midst, just to make the developers of said shopping mall happy?

Second, complaints about the 'traffic nightmare' created by the market. We've driven in Bangsar on Sundays, both when the market is setting up and after it's started. The most we have ever had to sit in our car, waiting to travel maybe 3 blocks, is ten minutes. And that's unusual - 5 minutes is more the norm. Said 'traffic nightmare' is easily avoided by parking on the other side of Bangsar Village Shopping Center and walking to the market. Moreover, according to our experience a couple weekends ago, the relocation of the market hasn't changed a thing traffic-wise.

Finally, those canopies, which KL City Hall has required vendors to purchase, and which, according to the Star article, a spokesman for the municipality said 'will create an image of uniformity and hygiene.'

Whaaaaaaat? Utter poppycock! Does DBKL seriously think that a sea of brand new (for now, but not after a few weeks' use) blue material is going to attract shoppers and tourists ... or that the lack of it will keep them away? I don't know about you, but when I see blue cotton I don't think 'HYGIENE!' DBKL is known for its hare-brained maneuvers - I don't think there's a Kuala Lumpurian reading this who will disagree - but this really takes the cake. Why the heck should vendors be required to pay for DBKL's desire to color-coordinate reality?

In spite of its relatively higher prices, Bangsar's pasar malam is a real pasar malam, frequented not just by monied expats (I'm betting the Chairman is not among its regular patrons) but by Malaysians. And by Bangsar residents (not all of whom, by the way, are monied expats and hip, swinging singles), folks who come to sup the famous laksa assam and snack on Stadium Popiah, buy flowers, pick up some pickled mustard greens or homemade kaya, and meet friends. It's a nice little bit of Malaysia (as is the morning market) in the midst of bland Bangsar, with its lookalike bars and formulaic theme restaurants and shops and - now - multiple shopping malls.

Can't DBKL just leave well enough alone? Doesn't it have other things to do? (Arranging for regular trash pickup in our neighborhood comes to mind.)

And can't some certain BBRA members (are all Bangsar residents opposed to the old location?) appreciate the beauty of the fact that their neighborhood - unlike many in KL nowadays - still has some character and real street life? Those who wish to avoid the 'nightmares' of urban life - traffic, congestion, noise - might consider moving out to the 'burbs rather than trying to turn their urban neighborhoods into twee little versions of 'city living'.

Good luck to the vendors. We wish you the best. But if the pasar malam doesn't return to its old self, with the old crew, we won't be back.

Dough Story: In Ulu Yam, It's All About the Noodles

In Ulu Yam, in a timeworn Chinese coffeeshop next to a rubber sap collection depot, we found noodle heaven.

At Kedai Kopi Hook Choon Kee, magic is made in an ample but basic kitchen where shafts of sunlight are suspended in clouds of vaporized cooking oil that rise from giant woks.

Hook Choon Kee is a third-generation enterprise. The shop was opened in the early 1900s by this woman's grandfather. She and her husband have been running the place since he passed away in 1994.

The family is known for its loh mee - wheat noodles in a dark gravy thick with strands of cooked egg and lightly soured with black vinegar. Arrive around noon on a weekend and watch the parade of cars that disgorge families into a restaurant across the street, where a loh mee competitor operates offers al fresco and air-conditioned seating. Register that Hook Choon Kee is almost empty, and wonder if you're in the right place.

Then sit back and wait, as regulars arrive by foot and by bicycle and, only occasionally, by car. These aren't out-of-towners. Many of them don't even bother waiting to place an order. They walk straight back into the kitchen and help themselves to lunch.

Trust the locals.

The sparkle of Hook Choon Kee's loh mee is its noodles, made in small batches back in that atmospheric kitchen several times a day.

They're simply flour and water, nothing else, mixed together by the man of the house at a low work table of wooden planks that bend under the weight of his kneading. He flattens the dough by hand into a round loaf and then, with the help of his elder son, passes it again and again through the rollers of a flour-coated hand-cranked press. As the dough becomes thinner and thinner, and longer and longer, the noodle maker sprinkles it with flour to save it from the rollers.

Finally, what was a dough loaf has become a thin dough sheet. He folds it back and forth on itself and then cleavers it into thickish strands.

Another batch ready for the pot.

At the stove, his wife makes each massive bowl of loh mee to order, chopping ginger and pork, boiling greens, breaking eggs, adding soy and vinegar.

The gravy is thick but not gloppy, slightly sweet but tempered by vinegar. It's perhaps not sour enough for us, but the fine, silky-chewy texture of noodles made probably not more than half an hour before they found their way into our order of loh mee more than makes up for it.

Eateries serving loh mee often offer deep-fried fish cake as well. This one is skillfully fried, with a decently crispy coating and not-too-bouncy texture. But it's the loh mee that holds our attention. 

That, and Hook Choon Kee's exquisite sambal, with an intriguing richness that our dining companions guessed might originate in taucu (fermented soy beans). No, the owner informed us, this slightly tart and notably spicy concoction owes its deliciousness simply to onions, garlic, and dried chilies. We took home a bagful, dipped up from a huge urn in the kitchen.

Hook Choon Kee is - no exaggeration - an Ulu Yam institution.

Do EatingAsia readers tire of reading about places like this, spots that haven't changed a thing for years? We hope not. Because we'll never weary of extolling the virtues of eateries like Hook Choon Kee, where food is prepared with care, the way it should be, the way it has been for decades.

Thanks to our friend S and the KL food blogger who led us on this excursion.

Hook Choon Kee Kedai Kopi Dan Makanan, No. 22 Jalan Besar, Ulu Yam Lama, Batang Kali (Ulu Yam is about an hour's drive from KL. You can't miss the main road; Hook Choon Kee sits right on it.) H/P: 012-676-8380, 012-667-2383, 012-979-3273. The shop also serves the noodles in broth with greens and an egg (sang mee), and serves a few stir-fried dishes, including frog, as well.

Rice Cube Delight

Strange as it may seem, it's not all that easy to find great Malay food in Kuala Lumpur. Fine Indian food - vegetarian, especially - abounds, and almost every coffee shop is home to at least one extra- talented Chinese hawker, but sniffing out memorable Malay dishes is a little tougher.

Malay is one of those cuisines that seems most at home at a home. It's not surprising then that when one does come across delicious Malay delicacies they are more likely than not the product of a family business, prepared in a home kitchen whether or not they're sold in a restaurant or from a stall.

 

Personal recommendations lead to the best Malay food, and over the holidays we were lucky enough to receive one from a local blogger. His raves for the goodies dished up at a semi-permanent stall on the MRR2, and a warning to get there early if we wanted to avoid disappointment, got us into the car bright and early one morning just before New Year.

 

The specialty here is lontong, which consists of nasi impit (cubes of pressed rice) doused in kuah lodeh (coconut gravy), sprinkled with serunding (grated coconut dry-fried with spices) and dabbed with sambal (chile sauce). One could stop there, of course, but our source had praised the stall's sambal sotong (brown squid cooked in sambal, opening photo) and beef rendang (above). Who were we to doubt him?

First things first: the kuah lodeh here, plenty creamy but not too rich and packed as it is with vegetables (cabbage, long beans, carrot) and strips of tempeh, is in and of itself delicious; sambal is just slightly sweet, featuring soft caramelized shallots and a wicked, creeping burn.

We surely can't fault the beef, subtly spiced and cooked to fall-apart softness (it's worth noting  that the serving of meat here is quite generous), but it's the squid we keep thinking back to. Brown squid is a large, thick-bodied variety, making for rather meaty pieces. The ones swimming in this sambal are exceptionally tender, with nary a trace of rubberiness, making for a dish that begs to be taken home and enjoyed again, on its own, without the (albeit delightful) distraction of coconut gravy and serunding.

That right there's a meal, but we wanted to linger in the full-bellied afterglow that was hanging over our table by the time we'd finished. So we surveyed the roti menu and settled on a sardine version. The man behind the griddle delivered a freshly made flaked fish and sauteed onion-stuffed pancake that qualifies as 'light as a feather'. Puffy and light rather than leaden, spare on grease, beautifully browned and crusty in some spots, it went down a treat with accompanying red chile and onion-embellished thin yellow curry itself studded with a couple of nubbins of lamb.

We'd stop by here again just for a takeaway bag of the kuih dadar, rice flour 'pancakes' rolled around a filling of grated coconut and sugar. This version is exceptionally fresh, the pancakes soft and the filling - featuring white, rather than brown palm sugar - heavy on the coconut and very, very moist. After finishing our breakfast with these two we went back for more, emptying the stall's tray.

Lontong, roti, and kuih, MRR2, Kuala Lumpur. On the MRR2 heading away from the city, pass the exit for the National Zoo and keep to your left. Before the next overpass you'll find a line of cars parked at the curb - the semi-permanent stall is there, right next to an Indonesian wood furniture store. 630 or 7am until 12 noon (but be advised - most everything is mostly gone by 11am). Closed Mondays. Lontong 2-4 ringgit, roti .70-2 ringgit.

In KL, A Mouthwatering Myanmar Moment

'What have you got?'

'Carlsberg.'

'OK, what else have you got?'

'Heineken.'

'But what do you have to eat?'

'Guiness!'

It's a Sunday afternoon in Kuala Lumpur and we're in the midst of an uncommon moment of miscommunication. English is widely spoken in Malaysia, and it's the rare coffeeshop or restaurant that isn't able to scare up a staff member or customer that speaks at least a few words.

Unless said coffeeshop or restaurant lies in the vicinity of KL's bus station. This part of town, the streets and lanes that criss and cross at odd angles behind and on either side of the hulking Kota Raya shopping center, is where Malaysia's migrant workers within a bus ride of KL come to enjoy their day off.

Eyebrows sometimes rise when we mention this area. The term 'snatch thieves' is often bandied about. We probably wouldn't stroll these sidewalks at deepest night (but then, there are many parts of KL that we wouldn't wander at deepest night), but to our eyes the men (it is a mostly male scene) hanging out around here on a Sunday afternoon are engaged primarily in what overseas workers in just about any land do on their days off: visiting with friends, sharing letters and photos from home,

buying and using phone cards,

and doing a spot of shopping.

We like this part of town. Unfamiliar music, indecipherable scripts, unrecognizable languages, new foods ... a walk around here on a Sunday afternoon can seem like a quick, exhilerating trip to any one of a number of other Asian countries - Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines.

Today it's Myanmar.

We've wandered into Shan Restaurant looking for grub, but the only language we and the staff seem to have in common is beer. A glance around the dimly lit restaurant reveals that, yes, most every guy in here has a mug in front of him. While we have nothing against beer, it just doesn't qualify as lunch in our book.

Squinting into the blue TV-lit dimness of the restaurant's rear, we confirm that food is being eaten. And there's an extensive menu on the wall. In Burmese.

No problem. We're experienced travelers and we've been in this situation before. We point. We'll have what they're having.

First up, mohinga Shan khauk swe (Shan noodles), accompanied by plain hin jo (consomme). Cubes of well-cooked pork in a coconuty, fish-scented curry sit atop cool, thin rice noodles. Plenty of chopped peanuts and a shower of chopped coriander add crunch and flavor. A mild, tasty bowlful, especially with an added squeeze of lime and a spoonful of dried, roasted chilies.

Next, we cruise the table of prepared dishes at the back of the restaurant. Truthfully, nothing looks especially delicious. But we love wet-thar gonbaon gyi, a stir-fried dish of diced pork with dried chilies and loads of sweet, caramelized onions and a beef preparation (above) made with dried meat and a cupboard full of dried spices, including cumin and coriander. The beef has a wonderful chewy but not rubbery texture, halfway to jerky.

And we're absolutely blown away by an unidentifiable green vegetable cooked with an astounding number of whole, fresh green bird and dried red chilies to a velvety softness. It's wonderfully sour, searingly hot, and decidedly fishy, just the sort of explosive combination of strong flavors that we adore. After a bit of sign language on my part, a fellow customer tells us it's called chin poung yat ywet ('yat' 'ywet'= 'vegetable'). We suspect that the dish's fishiness comes from the Burmese equivalent of Thai bplaa raa.

On our way out we stop at the small shop in the front of the restaurant, where homesick Burmese can stock up on CDs, DVDs, and ingredients like Burmese dried chile, margosa pickle, and kadetchin (pickled tea leaves) for what might be Burma's other national dish, fermented tea leaf salad.

Despite the language challenge, we're intrigued. We'll be back.

***Thanks to the Burmese commenters who've weighed in with info on the dishes!***

Restoran Shan Taung Dan, No. 16-18 Lebuh Pudu (behind Kota Raya shopping center), Kuala Lumpur. Tel. 03-2031-9299. Open 8am to ?

Padang Night Lights

I suppose if we lived in Indonesia the bemos (mini buses) would drive us up a wall.

They're all over the road, traffic rules (are there any?) be damned. They're stinky - not a lot of emission standards in effect on the islands. Bemos are loud, mufflers growling and music blasting out of their open windows and doors at decibel levels high enough to rattle eardrums. And if you're not a local fares are, um .... fluid.

But bemos are so cool.

We stand on a Padang curb at dusk and can't help but smile at the parade. Each bemo is different, every one a statement.

Drivers and the guys who sit alongside, collecting money from passengers, take a lot of pride in their rides. They're the Indonesian equivalent of Los Angeles' lowriders.

In Padang bemos grudgingly share the road with horse-drawn carts, motos, and many a kaki lima (literally, 'five feet' - the three of the cart and the two of the food vendor who pushes it).

Kaki lima owners take as much care to personalize their 'wheels' as bemo owners do.

Padang has a surprisingly strident skateboard culture. This practice ramp is set up in front of a surf and skateboard store at a bend in the road that sees regular traffic jams. The whoosh and slam of skateboarders riding the curve back and forth is accompanied by the thump-thump of bemo sound systems.

Stalking bemos makes us hungry. A bowl of tasty beef soto does the trick.

It's a food blog, after all.