Pig's ears & fried grasshoppers

At the goo bar koay tiau t’ng place I was astonished to see a man in a tie serving coffee. KH thought that he must be the man who used to be at the back of the shop making coffee. This we confirmed when the woman answered my question as to why the poster on the wall announcing English breakfast had disappeared. Here answer was: “Because my husband is no longer helping me in the morning.” Shortly afterwards he hopped into a car and went off. He must have got a job and visited the coffee shop when he had a break, This, by the way, is the only coffee shop in Penang where the proprietors are English educated.

The goo bar koay tiau t’ng woman is busier then before and even at 3.30 pm the coffee shop is full with her customers. Chen’s friend from Langkawi fell in love with her beef soup and had two bowls. He thought the beef was superbly cooked. Chen had made friends with the old English man whose yacht was tied up next to his in Langkawi. They were in ecstasies over the Thai food at Sebai Sebai and so we started talking about food in other countries. The man told me that the fried grasshoppers in Cambodia were “lovely” which led me to telling him about Lao which I was sure produced better fried grasshoppers and cicadas and better still, hornet’s grub. I told him why Lao was shangri-la and he has decided to sail there.
The boss came to greet them with her bottle of whisky and we had a round with her.

By the way, the old man was adamant that the tim sun he had at Cintra Street (?) was one of the best in the world. I had never even heard of the restaurant and never heard that our tim sum was first class. The Cantonese who should know better, call Ipoh is “little Hong Kong” and Cintra Street “little Ipoh” anad it was never promoted.

We learnt something new from the old man’s visit. That we have a string of hotels called Tune which charge MR17 a night with air con. He was in the one in Burma Road and showed us photos of the room and shower to convince us that what he said was true; Chen must have regretted putting his younger friends into the E&O.

Chen’s younger visitors were friends from the days when he was a student in England. We gave Trevor and his wife pig’s ears at North Beach Café at 1.30 am and they liked it. They were also lucky with the ch’i - flower crabs just landed by the fishermen down on the beach which we had steamed at Hai Wei restaurant. We explained the special sweetness in the meat of the Penang crabs and their habit of staying high on coconut trees. Chen disdained the nutcracker and cracked the soft shells with his teeth the old fashioned way. Talking of crabs those writing about food in Penang do not seem to know that Penang people eat only ch’i and not cheem - rock crabs, which are tasteless to them.

.

Parasol and motor bike

I’m afraid that dinners, visitors have made me ignore the garden, The Penang File and this blog. But I have at last managed to publish The Penang File and now turn my attention to the blog and jot down what’s been going on in my head since the last issue.

Yes this photo of a woman with a parasol on a motor bike in Betong has been waiting to be publicised. It was the same in Lao. I wondered how they kept their balance and why they were not swept away by the wind while holding the parasol in one hand.

Thinking that STRADA meant an Italian restaurant we went there to find that it is Canadian owned (two flags inside betrayed its origins). It’s been operating in Burma Road for a year and we failed to notice it. The man inside explained they had good business lunch time with Malay women customers - that explained why they served no pork. I liked the New York cheese cake which the manager, who looked as if he were the cook, said was made by the boss’s wife. The braised lamb shank was good too and the coffee was American. So now we have a Canadian place in addition to a Bulgarian restaurant, German pub and a Serb pub.

The censors are still at it. This time the victim is Durga, the Hindu goddess. In Off the Edge she suffered the indignity of her breasts being blacked out. Imagine how much it cost us to maintain hundreds of government staff with their brushes ready when the magazines are opened and scrutinised.