Quality control…

I do think that there must be some quality control at a few places around town like here, for instance. I enjoyed the Foochow fried noodles, special, so very much and since then, I had been telling everyone that none around here could be any better. However, when my relatives were in town in November last year and I took some of them there to eat that, what the lady dished out turned out to be rather disappointing. There were a number of us so I placed a large order for one big plate (RM15.00) for all of us to share so I would not know whether it was because she was not accustomed to cooking so much at one go or it was not her good day but what we were served that morning was certainly nothing to shout about.

Then, there was this one here…

The last time when I was here with the tourism award people, I had the Foochow fried noodles…

*Recycled pic*

…and it was so good that when the rest tried, they ordered another plate to share on top of the dianpianngu that they were having – this place is actually one of the two in town noted for that Foochow delight.

Well, I was in the vicinity the other morning and I decided to stop by and have that again. This was the special (RM4.50)…

…and as you can see, the gravy is different, almost clear and despite the additional ingredients, it sure paled in comparison to what I had the previous time. Yes, they do it like this at a number of places and no, I am not fond of it this way even though once you’ve tossed the noodles…

…and mixed it well with the gravy, it does come quite close but no, that is not the way I like it.

In the old days, when we knew one was good, every time we dropped by to eat, it would always be good so we would always stick our favourites in town. Now that there is this predominant inconsistency, I really do not know which one to bring visiting friends and family to especially when owing to the limited time that they have here, they would probably be able to go to one and one alone and of course, they would expect a very good one, not one that is sometimes good and sometimes not really so. I wonder if anyone knows of one here that is ALWAYS good?

Now, moving on from the post proper, I was so very delighted that other day to have had the opportunity to meet John (the one standing beside me)…

…again. We were classmates and even though he was in the science stream and I was in the arts, we were very good friends way back in 1969 after which I left the school to study Form 6 in another school in town and he left for further studies in Australia. We never saw each other again after that. Actually, there was some kind of a reunion gathering the day before, Saturday, but I was not around as I had to drive my girl back to her school…and it was very nice of Robert, seated next to me, to arrange another one here on Sunday so I could get to meet John before he left town.

And talking about Robert, his missus, who cooked the fried dabai that they gave me that day, made these popiah (spring rolls)…

…and they went through all that trouble to send them to my house for me to enjoy…and yes, they were very nice.

My missus said this was like how they used to make it in her family, the same as one lady known to us as Ah Lan, who was very well-known here at one time for hers. Maybe this is the Hokkien version, not quite the same as how we would do it in our family – I don’t know what version ours is, maybe something like the nyonya version, but this is how we’ve been doing it over the years since I was small (and no prize for guessing who was enlisted to do all the cutting and slicing as thinly as possible – khak eyeu tam pok, anchua anay cho!!!) and it is very nice too. Now I am itching to make some…but these days, there is no place in town where I can get very nice popiah skin or none that I know of, and I am not all that fond of the frozen ones. Anybody knows of any, come…do comment and let me have the details and contact number!