Long lost love…

This coffee shop had a different name before but probably there was a switch of ownership sometime back and they changed it to…

Don’t ask me what that means – I really do not know. I went there once, that time in 2011, and yes, I thought what I had was good but for no particular reason, I never went back again – I did go to the other coffee shop in that same row a number of times though.

Well, lately, I have seen a lot of people sharing photographs of the beef noodles they had there and praising it to the skies but no, it did not get me all excited and I did not bother to rush there to give it a try. Theirs is the Taiwanese version, not really my favourite and I do know of some really good ones here and there, that is why.

The other day, however, a foodie friend shared a photograph of the Penang har mee he had at this coffee shop and it did look a bit like the one that I loved so much a long long time ago, going all the way back to 2012! I wasted no time at all and the next day, I was there!

I placed my order at the stall that is further in at that coffee shop, the fourth one, right before the chu char (cook & fry) stall at the back. Having done that, I took my seat at a table at that extension to the right of the coffee shop…

– they did not have any tables inside which is a good thing as it is not a very big shop and a whole lot more spacious outside. There were quite a number of customers that morning, occupying a number of the tables but they were all spread out so physical distancing was not a problem at all.

The moment my bowl of Penang har mee…

…was served, I thought it looked familiar, especially those fried wantons. I always asked for those to be served separately…

…so that they would not turn soft and soggy after being soaked in the broth.

However, when I tried the broth, I was taken aback for a while – it was spicy! The lady must have tweaked the recipe a bit and added a bit of chili oil, a current craze, it seems. Other than that, it tasted great, not quite the same as what I loved so much in the past but it was good enough. It did not come cheap though, RM9.00 compared to only RM6.50 way back in 2012 but of course, that was A DECADE ago!!! LOL!!!

There were a lot of ingredients inside – four fairly big prawns, one whole egg, halved, three deep fried wantons, a few strands of kangkong (water spinach) and noodles…

I went and asked the lady and yes, she was the one and the same but unfortunately, she said that the broth would be prepared before hand, with the chili oil added so there would be no way it could be served non-spicy. Yes, she did think that I looked familiar, she added. Of course it has been so many years and I was surprised that she could remember – frankly, I couldn’t remember what she looked like then. *face palm*

Yes, I sure would want to go back there again for this or for something else from her stall or one of the other stalls at that shop. Incidentally, I saw this reply from my foodie friend to one of his followers, when asked about the beef noodles at this shop. He said that the people at the stall would be moving “…next to Mark shop coffee&tea middle of next month…” Who knows? I may just drop by one fine day when they have shifted there.

PETTY HARBOUR CAFE (2.323915, 111.838194) is located to the left of Choon Seng Coffee Shop in the blocks of shops along Lorong Wong Ting Hock 1, Off Jalan Tun Abg Hj Openg (Sungai Merah).