Tea time…

I did mention the Chinese pancake or ban chang kuih (慢煎糕) stall…

…in the next lane a number of times already but I never blogged about it.

It used to be parked right in the middle of the parking area in between the two blocks of shops along Jalan Ruby and perhaps, for the simple reason that it was so popular, its location is indicated quite prominently in Google maps, despite being just a makeshift stall, set up under a temporary canopy. I don’t know what transpired but it has moved to the five-foot way beside my regular food and fruit grocer there (and the vegetable seller by the side has moved to the front of the coffee shop in the other block at the very end).

Probably the reason why I’ve never featured it in my blog was the fact that I did not patronise it all that often. It used to open at 4 something and our tea time every day is around 3 o’ clock plus I am usually very lazy to go out in the afternoon. A long time ago, he used to close his stall come evening time and move to the pasar malam (night market) but eventually, he said he did not do that anymore – his mother would run the business at the other end. I don’t know if they still run the stall there or not but I’ve noticed that they open earlier here now, around 3.00 p.m. and I noticed that many customers would call him and place their advance orders to be collected later.

The other day, I hopped over to one of the shops there to buy a few things that we had run out of in the house but I was way too early, around 2.30 p.m. and the guy had not set up everything yet, much less started cooking/making the ban chang kuih (慢煎糕). He kept apologising even though it wasn’t his fault but I told him it was all right as I could just buy some of the other things that he had for sale.

I bought these chai peah/vegetable fritters (5 for RM2.00)…

…which we all agreed were a lot nicer than the more expensive ones that I bought that day (3 for RM2.00) even though those might be a little bigger and had a lot more chives.

As a matter of fact, my missus once told me that she met my cousin (staying at Rejang Park) who made a detour here after work (from the bus terminal area) just to buy the chai peah – she insisted they were her favourite in town even though they do have some pretty nice (and popular) ones at a stall at Rejang Park itself and there were only 3 left that day so she grabbed all of them (they were 3 for a ringgit then).

I also bought these tee peang (also 5 for RM2.00)…

I did not want to buy the ones with meat filling so I did not ask how much those were but we were of the opinion that the ones here paled in comparison to those that we have bought elsewhere so we would just give these a miss next time.

I saw these deep fried chiew chu kuih/tapioca cake (5 for RM2.00)…

…and I thought they looked very good so I bought some to try. Yes, they were indeed VERY nice, not very sweet but they were sweet nonetheless and since I am on a low-sugar diet, I should not be buying these too often – once in a while and just a piece or two should be fine. I thought the serimuka and the kao teng kuih (Chinese layer cake) looked very nice as well but I was able to resist the temptation and did not grab those too, thank goodness!

The Chinese pancake or ban chang kuih (慢煎糕) stall is located on the five-foot way in front of the TCM clinic between Kim Won Chinese Medical Store and Mini-supermarket and Swee Hung (2.316161, 111.840441) along Jalan Ruby, in the block of shops on the right – next to a hair salon at the extreme end.