Around here…

Well, this stall…

…is new around here.

I spotted it at the back of the coffee shop near my house when I hopped over there to buy the roast chicken, roast duck and char siew but it was already mid-afternoon and they were closing down for the day. You can park your car at the parking area at the back and come in via the back entrance – very convenient and no need for any close encounters with other fellow human beings who may be at the coffee shop at the time.

I noticed the cooking oil in the wok – it looked so clean and fresh unlike those that I’ve seen elsewhere so of course, I made up my mind to buy some of what they had for sale to give them a try.

The chai peah (vegetable fritters)…

…looked really good with the very generous sprinkling of the chives and they were bigger than the regular ones, that’s for sure.

However, whatever these were, they…

…caught my attention the instant I saw them.

The nice lady did say they were not tee peang (our Sibu Foochow version of the oyster cake) though there did seem to be a little similarity…

…in their appearance on one side. She did explain to me what it was but in Mandarin and I wasn’t really paying attention so I did not catch what she said.

Taking a closer look at it on the other side…

…I saw what looked like bubuk (very tiny shrimps, dried) and this was what it looked like inside…

My girl liked it and personally, I would say it was nice, something I would not mind having once in a while, selling for RM1.00 a piece but no, I could not detect the taste of the bubuk and no, I would not say that it swept me off my feet.

The chai peah…

…were nice, 3 for RM2.00 – the regular ones at the Ban Chang Kuih (Chinese pancake) stall in the next lane from my house are 5 for RM2.00 (used to be 6) and I do enjoy those very much as well. As far as these were concerned, other than the size and the extra chives, I did not think there was anything else that would make it stand out above the rest.

The lady told me that the guy was going to start frying the yew char koi/youtiao (油条/Chinese crullers) – no wonder the cooking oil in the wok looked sparkling new…and if I would wait for around 10 minutes or so, they should be ready pretty soon. I told her I would come back another time for that and left.

There are a number of people making and selling yew chai koi here, many of them Malays and they call it cakoi but unfortunately, none is like the ones I grew up eating way back in the good old days. So far, one good one that I came across was this one here – not some place that I would want to go all the way and with the pandemic dragging on and on, I am not even sure if it is still there or not.

MEI LE CAFE (2.313147, 111.846968) is located along Jalan Gambir, a stone’s throw away from the Delta Mall, straight ahead from the first turning to your left as soon as you turn into that road from Jalan Pedada, now Jalan Datuk Wong Soon Kai.