Malaysian food - Ipoh Hor Fun & Others

How good is the famous Ipoh food that I've heard so much about? I decided to taste it for myself this week. I took a train ride from Singapore to Ipoh and spent 2 days there to try out the local cuisine - checking up on the internet provided me with a short list of places and food to eat : Ipoh hor fun, chicken with bean sprouts - in the local Malay language it's called "Tauge Ayam" and in Cantonese it's called "Nga Choy Kai", tim sum and Hakka noodles...Armed with this information, the foodie in me was excited and the I was filled with anticipation of a culinary  adventure!!

First up, the chicken beansprounts - I found the famous shop that supposedly sells the best chicken beansprout in town. It was raining lightly on Mon night when I ventured out to try this famous delicacy. Plonked myself down at the corner of the shop and ordered for 3 (there were 3 of us) - it costs RM17 for the chicken and RM4 for the beansprouts. The chicken I found to be the same as the normal chicken rice you get at any stall in SIngapore or Malaysia. It's a little bit more aromatic probably because of the extra sesame oil sauce. So, nothing really special for my taste buds. Next came the beansprouts. Now, this was a bit different - I was greeted with a big plate of fat, short and full bodied beansprouts! Tasted them and it was crunchy and fresh - the look was different and flavour was quite tasty. So overall, beansprouts 4 stars, chicken 3 stars. After a very filling meal ( it was a big enough dish for 4 people and there were 3 of us, so there was plenty to go around), we mosied around the shops, looking at the the signature cookies from Ipoh area - the "frangrant biscuit called Xiang Ping in Mandarin" and chicken biscuits ( there wer 2 types - the first one is crispy and the other one is a hard on the outside and soft on the inside - the local phrase for it is "Kai Chai Peng". Yummy. Highly recommend the biscuits!

Next day I ventured out to try the local Hakka noodles and various other local foodstalls. On the recommendation of the local cab driver, we went to this street which loosely translated to "Glutton street" because gluttons who love to eat at this place. The name sounded promising! We walked around and I must say was a pretty disappointing sight.. there were quite a few stalls but all were selling similar items - Hor Kee noodles, claypot noodles, curry mee and wan tan noodles. Hakka noodles was nowehere in sight, but I got a feeling it's not that special. We ended up at a stall and tried the Hor Kee noodles and claypot noodles. Verdict - extra salty and extra ordinary :-) 1 star!

Not satisfied, we called for the cab and asked to bring us to the famous tim sum restaurant. It was open and I promptly ordered a set of "Har Kar" (prawn based dumpling), yam dumpling and yam cake. The "char siew" and "pork" dumpling was sold out and we had to wait if we wanted to get it - since the taxi was waiting, we decided to skip that order. The price - RM10. Quite expensive - about RM1 for a small piece of dumpling. The tim sum made up for the unsatisfying noodles earlier. TIm sum was 4 stars. I personally love the yam cake because it was steamed but also fried a little - the combination - YUMMY.

The next day, we booked a taxi and headed up to the moutain side attraction of Cameron Highlands, The highlands beckon..but that is another story.