I don’t understand…

My girl loves yong tau foo and I do too…and though I prefer it in soup like the one here…

*Archive photo*

…and also the one that we went for quite a number of times at the Red Garden Food Centre at Penang Road in Georgetown, I do enjoy the dry version as well like the one here…or here.

But wait a minute! Whenever people talked about yong tau foo, I would think of fish balls and all those things stuffed with fish paste. What I do not understand is why it is called tau foo (bean curd) when I had not had any tofu all those times when I had  yong tau foo. I went and googled and what I gathered from the article was that it is primarily tofu stuffed with ground meat or fish paste and the name literally means stuffed bean curd. Oh my!!! It certainly looks like everytime I had that, I had everything except the actual or the real thing!

All this while, we only had one solitary place selling something like that here, the one I mentioned earlier, and if there are any others, I do not know of them…and finally, this place opened…

…on the 14th of September and of course, we wasted no time in dropping by to give it a try. For those of you who have not heard of it and have no idea where it is, well, it’s (2.291684, 111.838253) among the new shops along Jalan Tong San fronting its junction with Lorong Langsat – behind the shops/buildings opposite the Rejang Medical Centre.

They strongly recommended their signature dish – the stuffed tofu puffs (RM1.70 each)…

…in the very nice soup or you can have stuffed tau kua (bean curd cake) instead but I noticed the people at the next table having it and the tau kua was white. Normally when I cook my own at home, I would lightly fry the pieces till lightly brown and as a matter of fact, I just cooked it the other day and my girl loved it! I did not take any photographs though as I was not planning on blogging about it.

Yes, it was nice and we enjoyed the very refreshing clear soup too and everybody loved these eggplant slices (RM1.70 each)…

…as well – the meat tasted like it had salted fish mixed with it and was very nice! As a matter of fact, they were so nice that the rest of our orders (all RM1.70 each)…

…paled in comparison. Of the three, my girl thought the bitter gourd had an edge over the other two including this one with the long beans…

For one thing, it seemed that they used meat, not fish paste, to stuff everything and if there was fish, they probably mixed it with meat. I would prefer the ones with fish paste a lot more but I guess beggars can’t be choosers – as they say in Chinese (Hokkien), “Boh hu, hay ya hor!” (No fish, prawn is good too!) so meat will have to do.

I did hear that we may choose to have everything served in soup but that day, we did not put in that special request. Another time, perhaps.

I saw this black vinegar pork leg (RM15.00)…

…on the menu and I just had to order it but the ladies were not all that keen on it, leaving me to eat all of it on my own while they had most of the rest of our orders. It was very nice though I was wishing the whole time that the gravy had been thicker – not so watery, and if only they had hardboiled eggs in it! That would have been great!

I went prying for more information and spoke to one young guy with my somewhat limited command of Mandarin and I found out that they all came from Kuala Lumpur. They were open seven days a week as at the time, they had not decided which day they would pick as their off day. Opening hours, he said, were from 9.30 a.m. till 2.00 p.m. and 5.00 p.m. till 9.30 p.m.

What we had that day totalled RM37.40, inclusive of rice and drinks – I guess that was all right for a pleasantly delightful brunch for three.