EatingAsia

Look at How Chengdu Smells

Chengdu bears little resemblance to its 1985 self. I certainly wouldn't know it from sight.

But I would know it -- I did know it -- from smell. As we walked in search of a taxi on our first evening a familiar scent began drifting from apartment block windows, restaurant kitchens, and outdoor cooking areas.

All over the city woks were being heated. When whisps of smoke rose from their glossy black surfaces they received glugs of this -- rapeseed oil (youcai) --

 

and then handfuls of this -- dried chilies.

 

As the fumes rose from those woks cooks muttered, as they always do, when dried chilies hitting a pool of hot oil raises fumes that make noses wrinkle and eyes water,

'Chiang bizi!' (呛 鼻子!)

'The nose is irritated!

But mine wasn't.

My nose was giddy. And my stomach was rumbling, just the way it did before-back-then, as I cycled home from class underneath windows of kitchens in which dried chilies sputtered in pools of rapeseed oil.

If you go to Chengdu, take a walk down an alley lined with mid-rise apartment houses just before lunch or dinner.

You'll know the essence of the city's food before you taste it.

Chiang bizi!

Miracle Cure

Last Sunday, after a late night followed by a morning of (admittedly self-inflicted) pain I was in need of something soothing. So Dave and I returned to the scene of these fabulously more-ish noodles to try another menu item: dou tang fan (豆汤饭 - bean and rice soup).

In Chengdu there are dozens of little shops serving dou tang fan; it's yet another dish that I don't know from our long-ago English teaching days. The first time I saw the characters, which literally translate to 'bean, soup, rice', I wondered if the dish might be sweet, warm, and made with red or mung beans, like the dessert-ish soups we often find in Southeast Asia.

 

Not so, not in the slightest. Dou tang fan is a savory cross between congee and a Western bean soup, and it's main ingredient is wan dou (豌豆 - dried garden peas, from the same plant which sprout dou miao/豆苗, the delicious pea leaves and tendrils that are a staple green veggie in Sichuan).

Dou tang fan is assembled to order: the wan dou, already stewed to baked beans consistency, are dished up from a big pot and stirred into hot broth. Finely shredded chicken, sliced napa cabbage, and rice are added and the soup is simmered just long enough to barely soften the cabbage. Right before serving it's seasoned with a bit of black pepper and sliced scallions.

 

Anyone who likes congee or Western-style bean soup would adore this dish. If you enjoy both -- as I do -- then it's a double-whammy slam dunk guaranteed to send you into spasms of ecstacy. (OK, maybe it's not quite that good. Close, though.)

The starch from the rice and the wandou thicken the flavorful broth and the cabbage brightens the intensely hearty flavors. As I hung my head in the vapors rising from my bowl and slurped up beans, rice, and greens, I couldn't imagine any food more suited to a tender tummy.

Restorative?

By the time I'd eaten half my dou tang fan I was dipping chopsticks into Dave's order of the shop's other specialty: ban ji pian (拌鸡 片), a beloved Sichuanese spicy cold dish of thinly sliced chicken bathed in chili oil seasoned with ground Sichuan peppercorns and raw garlic.

And just like that, I was back on the pony.

Jin Popo Shouzhang Mian, Xiaojiahe Jie (Xiaojiahe Street) almost at the corner with Xiaojiahe Bei Jie (Xiaojiahe North Street). Look for a double-front shop and, in front of the prep window, a big brown pot o' beans.

Sampling Sichuan's Bounty, the Point-and-Shoot Way

Steamed pork ribs and rice powder with nangua (winter squash or pumpkin)

Stroll awhile among the aisles of a market like this one and you're bound to leave hungry.

Fortunately Chengdu is packed with casual, inexpensive eateries serving proper dishes (as opposed to snacks such as noodles, dumplings, and breads/'pancakes') where you can sample Sichuan's seasonal bounty. My suspicion is that no restaurant here is out of reach of the intrepid non-Chinese speaker, but kuai can ('quick meal') and mizheng rou (steamed meat with rice powder) are pretty much point-and-shoot operations, and thus particularly accessible to the traveler whose Chinese vocabularly is limited to Ni hao and zai jian.

 

You'll know a kuai can joint by the table out front laid with big metal bowls offering an assortment of meat and vegetable dishes (just visible above, to the right). They're a bit like Vietnam's com binh dan places in that for a set price you get a (usually huge) serving of rice and a selection of three dishes. It's as easy as handing over your cash and pointing at what you'd like to eat.

At the place pictured above (directly across the street from the market I wrote about here, coincidentally) they were dishing up to office and construction workers (6 kuai, about US 80 cents person); most folks opted to eat from styrofoam takeaway trays. We asked instead that our dishes be served separately from our rice.

 

Left, from top: pork liver and green peppers, stir-fried lotus root and mapo dofu. Right, from top: celery and pork slices, a medley of mushrooms, hot and sour cabbage. Plus rice and a bowl of hot rice water, for drinking. Total: 12 yuan.

It should be no surprise that quality at these places is all over the map. This meal was had on our first full day in Chengdu and we were pretty happy with it (ie. it may not be pretty, but it was tasty). The lotus root was crunchy, the mapo dofu fiery if a bit light on numbing Sichuan peppercorn, the cabbage crisp-tender and nicely tart-spicy, and the mushrooms, a mixture of at least three varieties, earthy and meaty. And we arrived around 11:45 am -- just before lunch -- so everything was hot (turnover is quick at kuai can joints, so you can be fairly sure of a freshly cooked meal).

But several days later we ate kuai can in a nearby alley that blew that first one off the map. 

It was dished up by the cook himself -- always a good sign. We'd wandered past several times before and each time he'd asked us to stop and eat. When we finally did, we were grateful that he'd persisted.

 

This was in all truthfulness a second lunch, so we only had room for two items: douhua (simmered bean curd served with chili sauce -- an exquisite Sichuan specialty that we'll devote an entire post to down the line) and a dish of blood-red carrots, spicy green capsicum, potatoes, and fresh wood ear fungus stewed with nothing more than salt and a few fatty bits of pork belly -- a few basic ingredients taken to supreme heights with the simplest of preparations. This one was pure genius; after three weeks here in Sichuan it remains one of the culinary highlights of our trip.

 

Steamed egg custard garnished with chopped pork and fragrant unfiltered sesame oil

If kuai can doesn't appeal, keep an eye out for big metal (and less and less often, these days) bamboo steamers set out by the sidewalk. After mid-morning, when breakfast snacks like baozi (steamed dumplings) and mantou are sold out, these apparati hide steamed dishes like egg custard, yacai (pickled vegetable) crowned with thin slabs of pork belly, and mizheng rou, or meat (usually pork) mixed with toasted rice powder and steamed.

 

Mizheng rou dishes are turned out onto a plate before serving

Mizheng rou comprise an entire genre of dishes -- something I wasn't aware of until this visit to Chengdu. (In 1991, at a Chengdu friend's parents' house, we ate mizheng niurou -- steamed beef with cilantro and scallions, a recipe for which can be found in Dunlop's Land of Plenty.) The most common type, at least at this time of year, seems to be the one in the photo that opens this post: meaty pork ribs with sweet winter squash. It's about as comforting a dish as you'd imagine, the ribs nearly falling off the bone and the sweet squash enriched by its juices. The toasted rice clings to the meat, adding a bit of soft texture, and its soaked with the flavors of the pork and winter squash. All in all it's a fabulously flavorful and comforting dish that we haven't been able to get enough of this trip.

Sometimes mizheng rou eateries also offer kuai can, in bowls out front or on a smaller scale, from plates on display inside a glass case; stir-fries may also be available (in which case you'll probably be handed a menu). At this shop -- which was also a short walk from our first kuai can lunch -- we ordered, in addition to an ethereally fluffy steamed egg custard and the pork ribs with squash --

Clockwise from top: sauteed stem lettuce stem, pork meatballs, daikon, bean sprouts sauteed with chili pepper, stewed potatoes

a kuai can medley of stewed potatoes, bean sprouts lightly cooked with dried red chilies and Sichuan peppercorns, the stem portion of stem lettuce sauteed, tender white radish, and tiny pork meatballs that were so light on the tongue they were barely there.

As usual, pao cai (pickled vegetable - every place makes its own) is a must-have accompaniment.Every eatery makes their own and every version is different. This one, of red radish and celery, was lightly spicy, very sour, and not as salty as some we've sampled.

Standard acccompaniment to a Sichuan meal: pao cai or pickled vegetable

You can hardly walk a block in Chengdu without bumping into a steamer full of mizheng niurou -- we've sampled many in the last few weeks and they've all been excellent.

Some Chinese language ability helps, but it's not necessary at these places. Don't pass through Chengdu without including one of these spots in your eating itinerary.

Sichuan's Bounty

Doumiao (pea leaves) at a Chengdu wet market

As an Australian friend from our English teaching days reminded me recently, "We were lucky to land in Chengdu."

In the mid-eighties China there were certainly easier places to be a foreign student-turned teacher. Heat and hot water might have been nice. Sunshine would have been good. I often wished for a larger foreign community than 40 bodies. And I freely admit to wild cravings for just about any food that might be considered Western after my first three months.

But at that time -- and even now -- a 21-year-old budding foodie really couldn't have ended up in a better spot.

Sichuan's relatively mild and damp climate, cloudy skies, and the gray gauze of fog that often swathes its landscape make for sublime growing conditions. Despite near-freezing temperatures we were eating flavorful cucumbers, crimson carrots, glossy aubergines, tender pea greens (like those in the photo above), and thin-skinned sweet red peppers in winter. Spring came as early as the end of February in the form of sweet corn, peas, and juicy, beefeater-sized tomatoes. That year the province's bounty was brought home to us at the beginning of May, when on a trip to Beijing we found vegetable markets still stocked with little more than white cabbage, cauliflower, and leeks.

 

Chengdu's wet markets boast an amazing variety of fresh vegetables

If the fresh food situation in Chengdu was good then, it's simply astonishing now. Unlike China's more industrialized eastern and southeastern provinces Sichuan is still primarily rural. A couple of days ago we traveled two hours by high-speed train (oh my, how times have changed!) from Chengdu to Chongqing; most of our view was of bucolic countryside barely touched by rural industry, patch-worked fields of greens and other vegetables interspersed with trees dripping tangerines and blood oranges. 

(Heavy pesticide and fertilizer use is, of course, a concern. In our day crops grown around the city were fed from hand-pulled 'honey wagons' that roamed Chengdu in the evenings, collecting the contents of 'honey pots', ie. chamber pots.)

Hong youcai -- red 'oil vegetable', a type of mustard

While urban centers like Shanghai have swept away traditional wet markets Chengdu, we were thrilled to find, still boasts many -- like this small market on Donghua Lu (north of the Science and Technology Museum) that appears to have been relocated from a nearby construction site.

Ten types of fresh mushrooms  - a normal sight at Chengdu's wet markets

Here we found an unbelievable variety of vegetables, like the ten types of mushrooms sold from the stall above.

 

All markets have at least one stall selling seven or more types of bean curd products - fresh, dried, smoked

From my notebook:

Pea leaves; Chinese leeks; scallions; garlic shoots; napa cabbage; white cabbage; bok choy; baby bok choy; youcai (a type of flowering mustard); baby youcai; yellow youcai; chrysanthemum leaves; perilla leaves; pennywork; stem lettuce; romaine-like lettuce; 'A' vegetable; spinach; tatsoi; zhu er gen (a wonderfully tasty red and green leaf that's often sold attached to its root); Chinese broccoli; broccoli; cauliflower; celery; kohlrabi; daikon; red daikon; round radish, both white and red; lotus root; bamboo; young bamboo; three types of pickled bamboo; garlic and pickled garlic; sugar snap peas; snow peas; fresh peas, in the pod and shelled; fresh broad beans, large and small; sweet corn; red bell pepper; long red pepper; green bell pepper and long green pepper and 'curly' yellowish green pepper; mushrooms 10 kinds; orange winter squash; winter mellon; cucumber; red carrots; large and small taro; burdock; green beans ....

That's a partial list, by the way.

Add in various proteins, including a huge variety of bean curd products and vast quantities of pork, both fresh

A small pork section, by Chengdu wet market standards

and smoked/air-dried,

Larou -- pork belly smoked over pine boughs and then air-dried (named for the twelth lunar month)

and you've got the foundations of an exceptional culinary culture. Once again, we feel pretty lucky to have landed in Sichuan.

Vote, Vote for EatingAsia

A pleasant surprise and an honor too -- we've been nominated for a 2010 Bloggie (The Weblog Awards). If you appreciate what we do here, please hop over now to the Bloggie voting page, scroll right to the Asian Blog section, and give us your vote. Be sure to enter your real email address; after voting you'll be sent an email with a link you'll have to click in order to verify your vote.

Voting closes Sunday January 31st.

Many thanks!

Palm Noodles

It may seem so from the last few posts -- and this one too -- but it's not been all pasta in Chengdu. We've eaten plenty of liangban cai (cold dishes), chao cai (stir-fried dishes), mifen zheng cai (rice flour steamed dishes -- intrigued?), and hotpot n the last couple of weeks too (details to come, we promise). But Chengdu really is Xiaochi ('little eats') Central, so at least once a day we'vebeen sitting down to something doughy.

Like these shouzhang mian -- wide, thick rectangles of hearty wheat pasta that we saw being made behind a steamy window on Xiaojiahe Street, not far from Chengdu's Second Ring Road, on Sunday.

Shouzhang means 'palm', as in the palm of your hand, and I can only guess that shouzhang mian are named for the method that produces them: a careful stretching of a piece of dough with the tips of the fingers by width and height and then -- to achieve the proper thickness -- against the palm of the hand.

 

The result is a pretty luxurious noodle -- a fact easily surmised from our position outside that window.We watched noodle sheet after noodle sheet being dished up from a cauldron of boiling water before finally deciding to claim our own bowl (why the hesitation? We'd just eaten elsewhere. It wasn't nearly as notable).

 

Nothing prepared us for the way this particular shop serves the pasta: in dou tang ('bean soup'), a meat broth slightly thickened with yellow beans. You've a choice of protein additions (beef, pork ribs, or pork parts) and the option of la (chili spicy) or not.

 

Our bowl of shouzhang mian with tender red-cooked beef and a hit of chili oil included chunks of datou (literally 'big head' -- a type of Sichuanese preserved vegetable) and was topped with a frill of fresh coriander. Words simply can't convey how utterly comforting and more-ish (an adjective I generally despise and eschew, but which is particularly apt in the case of this dish) this bowlful was.

 

Though absolutely Chinese, it reminds us of Italian pasta e fagioli, in the way that the beans half-melt into a lovely mushiness that coats the pasta.

The best accompaniment is a saucer of sharply tart and salty paocai, Sichuan pickle made (this time -- paocai can be made from any number of vegetables) with white cabbage, garlic, and a copious amount of powdered dried red chili. 

(Even if you're not noshing on shouzhang mian, it's always worth asking after a serving of paocai -- most every dining establishment keeps aside a jar or five of its own homemade pickle. We've especially been enjoying it as an accompaniment to baozi, or steamed dumplings.)

 

Jin Popo Shouzhang Mian, Xiaojiahe Jie (Xiaojiahe Street) almost at the corner with Xiaojiahe Bei Jie (Xiaojiahe North Street). Look for a double-front shop and, of course, the steamy window showcasing palm noodle makings. 

A Winter Brew, Chengdu Style

Chinese dates and goji berries float in a mug of DoDo's boiled beer

Everyone (well, everyone who is Chinese) knows that drinking cold liquids is detrimental to your health. So what's a beer lover to do in the depths of a damp Chengdu winter (other than sip his or her favorite beverage at room temperature, that is -- which by the way is pretty standard)?

The answer is obvious: take your brew and boil it.

We noticed 'boiled beer' on the menu of DoDo's Cafe our first night in Chengdu, but hadn't an occasion (or the desire, if I'm to be truthful) to try it until a few evenings ago. We were chilled to the bone after being out and about for most of a sunless day (which is also pretty standard here in Chengdu) and, with a little help from a friend's SMS reminding us of DoDo's coordinates, headed straight for the cozy little bolthole and ordered up a couple of hot mugs o' beer.

The verdict: absolutely delicious.

{I should note that I am no beer connoisseur -- in fact I truly enjoy it only when I'm extremely thirsty and the beer being offered is extremely cold. Otherwise, I find that beer takes up too much room in my stomach that food would more satisfactorily occupy.}

There are -- so I hear -- many versions of boiled beer afoot in this city. DoDo's recipe -- for two drinkers -- is simple: pour a large bottle of Qingdao into a pan, add 4 Chinese dates, 8-10 goji berries, two canned lychees sliced into three pieces each, and two medium-thick cross slices of lemon. Bring to a boil and simmer gently for 10-15 minutes. Divide solids between two glasses, and add steaming beer.

(Ironically, we often drank beer with lemon back in the mid-eighties as well, squeezing the fruit's juice into a particularly rank and skunky brew called LiuYe  -- 'Green Leaves' -- to make it palatable.)

With boiling the beer takes on an almost winey flavor, and the dates, goji berries, and lychee infuse it with just a little sweetness that's nicely balanced by the bitterness of the lemon rind. It's a concoction that I just may try at home.

Imagine the possibilities if you're within reach of a darker, more substantial, hoppier brew -- star anise or Sichuan peppercorn, anyone?

 

A game of cards (of course -- it's Chengdu!) at DoDo's Cafe

DoDo's Cafe, 40 Jinlingheng Lu (near Renmin Nan Lu), Wuhou District. Boiled beer about CNY12 per much (less than U$2). Another DoDos' is located at Tongren Lu, Xiaotong Gang No. 12, Qingyang District.

Sweet Water Noodles

We're terrible tourists -- famous sites are always last on our 'To Dos' list.

And this trip has been no different. But I am here in Chengdu at least partly for a travel story, so yesterday afternoon we buckled down, got out a city map, and headed for one of Chengdu's biggest tourist draws: Wenshu Monastery, home to a nicely preserved Buddhist temple, vegetarian restaurant, and tea garden.

I can't recall ever visiting Wenshu Yuan when we lived here in the eighties; in fact, I don't even know if it was active and/or open then. But yesterday, a Saturday, it was heaving with Chinese visitors offering incense, kow-towing before the deities, and enthusiastically rubbing various objects -- fu/luck characters, gongs, brass antlered lions -- in front of and around the temples in the hope of bringing fortune to themselves and their loved ones.

A google of 'Wenshu Chengdu' brings up more information than I can offer in this post, so I'll leave aside a detailed descritpion of the monastery and get right down to a highlight of our visit -- tian shui mian, literally 'sweet water noodles'.

 

Several square blocks around the monastery have been spiffed up into a bland-ified warren of lanes and alleys lined with new 'old' gray-bricked, tile-roofed buildings occupied by tea and tourist trinket shops. In a sort of open courtyard in the middle of the structures is a food court set with stalls offering a variety of traditional Chengdu snacks.

Normally I'd pass an area like this by without a second glance, but I was drawn to a picture window at the very edge of the Wenshu 'recreation district'. Behind it, a white-coated fuyuan ('attendant') worked in a white-tiled room behind an L-shaped counter laden with ceramic bowls filled with various noodles and jellies, all waiting to be  dressed with an array of ingredients including:  sesame oil, soy sauce, 'red' soy sauce (black soy seasoned with various dry spices), vinegar, bean sauce, spicy bean sauce, sesame seeds, lajiao (red chili oil), thinned sesame paste, ground Sichuan peppercorns, sugar, and MSG.

The whole scene -- the fuyuan's dress, the simple but hearty snacks, the queue of customers clutching tissue paper tickets purchased at a front counter, which they'd then hand to the fuyuan in exchange for a bowl of noodles or dumplings -- reminded me of a hole-in-the-wall behind Chengdu's massive Mao statue that, back in the day, we biked to for our bi-weekly fix of hongyou chaoshou (wonton in red chili oil sauce). The only thing missing was the unruly clutch of would-be diners hovering behind each occupied chair ready to tussle for the seat as soon as it was vacated.

I ordered tianshui mian -- thick, square-cut noodles in a sweet-and-spicy sauce -- and, for old time's sake, one liang of hongyou chaoshou (in many shops dumplings and noodles are still sold by weight; one liang yields approximately one heaping handful of noodles or eight to ten chaoshou).

The noodles -- something we never encountered in the eighties -- were served cool and, despite my insistence that I do 'chi la' (eat spicy), underdressed. No matter, for this was easily remedied with spoonfuls of lajiao from a dish at the edge of the noodle room's counter.

They're the thickest, most fantastically chewy noodle I've ever eaten -- a wheat pasta lover's dream, really -- with a ridged, jaggedy surface that grabs every bit of sugar, Sichuan peppercorn, and chili pepper in the thick, sesame paste-y sauce. (Halfway into our bowl we discovered, courtesy of our tablemate, that they can also be ordered hot.)

And the chaoshou were excellent -- plump, porky, flapping silky wings of pasta in a rich, sweetish red sauce surprisingly light on dried chili heat but bearing enough huajiao (Sichuan pepper) punch to leave a numbing tingle that extended halfway down my throat. (This is a good thing, for a huajiao lover.)

Total bill: One US dollar. In Chengdu it seems, memories are tasty and cheap.

Gong Ying Pin Ming (corner shop; look for the picture window), 39 Wenfu Yuan Jie (Street) -- walk a minute or two past the entrace to Wenshu Monastery, it will be on your right. A wide selection of local xiaochi.

Surprise, Surprise

A regular in the park by the river, Chengdu

I have to admit it --- I'm more than a little bit surprised by what a fantastic time we're having here in China. I expected we'd enjoy ourselves to some extent, but I also expected ups and downs, and more of the latter than the former.

Has China changed that much, or have we? It's probably a bit of both.

An hour or so ago we returned to Chengdu from a town in northeastern Sichuan called Langzhong. We tagged along with a fellow food blogger who aimed to find out how the town's famous baoning vinegar is made. She wasn't 100% successful in her quest, but did talk an amazing game in the process. (I'd forgotten how necessary is the art of understated persuasion here.)

But in the end, the vinegar didn't really matter, because Langzhong is a wonderful dream of a relatively un-prettified gucheng ('ancient' town) that we were more than happy to while away 48 hours in.

As we drove into Chengdu after 5 1/2 hours on the bus, the city's ugly apartment blocks loomed tall and dreary against the featureless gray sky (we have enjoyed exactly one day of sort-of sun since we arrived here 10 days ago -- absolutely normal weather in Chengdu).  For about a minute I wished we were back in the countryside ... but then I started thinking about Chengdu's laid-back hustle and bustle, how the streets smell like hot oil and chilies at lunchtime and in the evening, about the bubbly ayi up the street from our lodging who mixes a mean liang mian (cold noodles with chili) and the tea house next to the river where we spent a couple of pleasant hours on Monday afternoon, and especially about all of the treats we haven't yet tracked down ....

I'm happy to be back. So much so, in fact, that we're extending our stay.

Which means -- if you follow me on Twitter (see the righthand sidebar) I'll continue to be silent (and won't be able to respond to direct messages -- email me instead) for at least another ten days. I'm trying to post updates on Facebook, so feel free to seek me out there. And we've got many posts on EatingAsia to come, hopefully sooner rather than later.

In the meantime it's dinner hour, and we're off to tuck into yet another superb meal.

New York Times: Kuala Lumpur One of 31 Places to Go in 2010

The New York Times recently named Kuala Lumpur one of The 31 Places to Go in 2010. It's about time, we say -- after almost four and a half years here we still love this city, for its friendly, food-obsessed residents and stupendous eats.

If you're here via the NY Times you may want to have a look at our feature story on KL (as it's known to locals) that appeared about a year ago in Budget Travel magazine with recommendations for what to do and eat and where to shop (there's also a slide show) in and around KL.

Check out the Kuala Lumpur and Klang Valley category on our sidebar (be prepared to scroll -- there's 48+ worth's months of posts there, including some only tangentially related to KL) for more noshing suggestions. You might also occasionally be able to find our food reviews and feature stories at Time Out Kuala Lumpur, where Robyn was Food Editor for 18 months.

(If you're headed elsewhere in the region, you'll also find here fairly extensive coverage of Penang, Jakarta, Chiang Mai, Bangkok, southern and central Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan.)

Finally, in the interest of making things simple, our Top Ten Eats in KL -- hawker stalls, kopitiam (Chinese coffee shops), and restaurants that, after all these months, we continue to return to again and again. In no particular order:

1. Sek Yuen, a fantastic old Cantonese joint where everything is still cooked over wood, which Robyn lovingly described here.
2. Yut Kee
3. Hong Ngek
4. Imbi Market -- downtown KL's last traditional wet market. Cruise the fresh food aisles to get an idea of what's put to use in Malaysian kitchens, then head over to the busy food court for fantastic versions of all sorts of hawker foods, from noodles to kuih (sweets).
5. Pak Din Ikan Bakar
6. Bakti Woodlands (order the thali, and check the front counter to see if lacy pancakes filled with sweetened, cardamom-scented mashed daal are on offer)
7. Hakka Mee (Pork Lovers -- Alert!)
8. Homemade coconut milk and palm sugar kuih (sweets) from Ah Meng's mobile stall, Bangsar (daily from about 3pm -- if you arrive much after 4:30 you'll find nothing left).
9. Bak Kut Teh in Klang (this will require a 45-minute taxi ride, but if you're a hardcore pork lover it's worth it. While you're in Klang you might also check out its Little India.)
10. Madras Lane Asam Laksa, Chinatown