Bangkok Glutton

Delicious panipuri at Ganga Cafe

I love visiting Kuala Lumpur, but at the same time, I can’t help but view each trip with a bit of trepidation. After all, May is our host — the same woman who took us to a char siu place, a laksa shop next door, and then bought two pork meatballs for me to eat on the road because I would be without food for 15 minutes. This woman. She hosts us. And, although we are immeasurably grateful, there is no way for us (me, really, who cares about the others) to prepare for the immense mountains of food awaiting us.

This trip is no different. Perhaps anticipating the gluttony in store, my husband (with good intentions) orders me a gluten-free breakfast on Thai Airways, which ends up being a wildly overcooked poached egg next to a smattering of unseasoned sautéed mushrooms. So I am hungry when we enter Fuego, but it is the last time we are hungry for the next three days.

Fuego does a very brisk business serving up snazzy cocktails, creative South American-inspired tapas, and a lovely view of downtown KL that has only recently been obscured by construction for the new Four Seasons Hotel. It doesn’t really matter though. It’s all about the food: a handful of guacamole and ceviche iterations, different arepas, smoked quail eggs on a seaweed and vegetable nest. A ho-hum-sounding salt-baked potato with foie gras is actually the best thing I can remember having this year, covered in a sage hollandaise made with whole butter and so delicious that I will never attempt to make it on my own. A grilled watermelon salad with fried halloumi is refreshing; the lamb ribs toothsome and meaty; and the Malabar fish stew surprisingly light. We finish everything, and it is only after 3 or 4 (or 5) Sangrias (including Nat’s) that I remember to take a blurry photograph of our half-eaten churros dessert, served with a salted caramel espuma.

The next day, I am not hungry, but that doesn’t stop us from following May’s advice to “pick up a roti” at Sri Paandi (37 Jalan Date Mahmud 11/4, 46200 Petaling Jaya). The roti ends up becoming a chicken biryani or two, because let’s face it, we don’t really understand what they are saying to us and “biryani” was the only word we recognized.

Chicken biryani at Sri Paandi

We take everything they offer to us, different curries and dhals from buckets and tiny bowls of yogurt and whatnot, so it’s a surprise that they don’t offer the best-looking stuff of all, whatever this is:

But we are already headed somewhere else. Kumi Cafe (21, Lorong Setiabistari 2, Bukit Damansara, 50490 Wilayah Persekutuan, +60-12-651-1182) specializes in Malaccan Eurasian cuisine, a mix of local Malay and Portuguese cooked by chef Ruben Moissinac. There are expected staples like curry seku, a Goan-Portuguese dry curry thickened with coconut milk, otak-otak (a steamed fish paste similar to Thailand’s hor mok) and a stew made with keluak (sadly unavailable that day), a nut that is poisonous on the tree but edible after it is buried in volcanic ash for three months and soaked for one week in water that is changed daily.

Kumi’s otak-otak

But the best dishes were unexpected, like the savory pie stuffed with dry sambal chicken.

Don’t worry. When we finished, it was only a couple of hours before dinner, which would be at our friend’s house. There, a Nonya-style pork curry would prove so delicious that we could not help but stuff our gorges yet again, only to bitterly regret it later on when we cannot sleep.

The next day, dark circles under my eyes, the first thing I eat is lunch, because I cannot imagine even the hint of food anytime before noon. Too bad for me lunch is a dazzling Indian vegetarian at Ganga Cafe (19, Lorong Kurau, Taman Bukit Pantai, 59100 Kuala Lumpur, +60-32-284-2119) and I once again can’t help myself — I have to have as much stuff as possible. We have thosai, light flaky stuffed crepes made with rice flour and paired with coconut chutney, but also something from the display in front, sweet pumpkin stuff and spicy chick pea something-else and dhal and bracing tamarind soup in a silver cup. There’s also panipuri, little cups of fried dough filled with chili, potato, onion and chickpeas. It’s left to you at the last moment to pour a little bit of coriander-flavored water into your “cup” before putting it into your mouth and enjoying the perfect bite: crunch that explodes into something tart, salty and just a little bit sweet.

Some of the spread at Ganga

That night, we eat where we always eat when we are in KL: Overseas Restaurant. But to mix it up a little bit, we eat a succession of different things that now blur when I think of them, because we also had a lot of wine. We had perfectly stir-fried lettuce leaves with touched with a hint of fermented tofu and a fish soup that reminded me of Thai gaeng som, or sour curry. Of course, we had the roast suckling pig, served the way only Overseas does, with a side of sticky rice and plenty of curry sauce. There were other things that I no longer remember, but I’m sure we gamely tried them all. We didn’t end up exploding in KL, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Wall of cooling turtle jelly

In all my trips to Hong Kong, Causeway Bay has consistently been my least favorite place to go. The reasons seem obvious: 1. I always get lost 2. I don’t know where to go 3. Did I mention it’s confusing and I invariably get lost there?

What I was missing was a neighborhood guide. Tadd, a Cantonese Singaporean who has lived in Causeway Bay for years, is the perfect person for the job. This is a woman who clearly loves this place, a study in contrasts that hosts not only the most expensive retail space in the world (in fact, Tadd says McDonald’s had to move a few blocks because it would have had to sell 16-17 hamburgers/second to make up for its rent), but is also home to a Hong Kong that, to its long-time residents, is becoming more of a distant memory: chaotic, Byzantine, busy, and yes, easy to get lost in.

Luckily, there are lots of delicious places to use as landmarks. A turn down every alleyway yields a wonderful place for rice porridge, a good stop for pineapple buns, delicious Macau-style egg tarts that are lightly charred on the outside and runny within, gently braised bits of cow lovingly layered over rice or noodles. Up yonder is the best store for fermented tofu; next to rice porridge is the store to go to for every variety of pickled plum imaginable. Tadd walks us to what she says is her daughter’s favorite wintertime restaurant, and it turns out to be snake soup (Se Wong Ke, 24 Percival Street, Causeway Bay), its different varieties meant to address different ailments such as coughs, a cold or I-don’t-kn0w-I-just-don’t-feel-like-it-anymore — what I would have ordered).

I guess I’ll have one of those?

And culinary discoveries are not the only ones to make here — under the bridge, at the invisible border where Causeway Bay meets Wanchai and the “spicy crab under the bridge” restaurant, elderly Chinese ladies await customers who flock here especially to curse enemies or ward off those who would curse them, with the help of some candlelight, figurines and the sturdy sole of a shoe to batter someone’s written-down name with. On a busy night, the intersection rings with the sounds of shoe heels battering plastic, over and over again.

Ready for business

But we’re here for the food. As is always the case with Hong Kong, it’s almost impossible to fit everything inside your stomach that you want to stuff it with, because no one ever has enough time or room for that. But some standouts included Chiu Chow Garden, where we feasted on crazy-fresh fried fish, an assortment of perfectly stir-fried greens, the “famous” roast chicken, and stewed goose on a bed of fried tofu to soak up its juices “because in Hong Kong, you must eat goose”, says Tadd. Although the Chinese in Thailand are predominantly Chiu Chow (or Teochew) and the Chinese-Thai food in Bangkok is supposed to reflect that, nothing we had in Hong Kong reflects anything we’ve had in Thailand, including the introductory and closing servings of bitter tea, meant to aid digestion.

Cold eggplant in a stellar sesame sauce at Chiu Chow Garden

After dinner, to settle our stomachs, Tadd takes us for “dessert”, which should never be referred to as dessert ever forever, because that would hugely disappoint anyone with images of sugarplum anything in their heads. It’s called guillinggao, or turtle jelly, and it’s traditionally made from powdered turtle under-shell mixed with different Chinese herbs to correspond to your ailment. Yes, it’s medicine, just like snake soup, and HK people eat it for “dessert”, because they are that sort of good person that exercises on their holidays and appoints themselves designated driver even before anyone threatens to tell their mom.

Wikipedia says turtle pudding became a thing after an emperor almost cured his smallpox with it (before abandoning his treatment and dying). Today’s versions probably don’t really contain actual turtle shell (only herbal approximations), but tell that to all the people who stop by Kung Wo Tong on their way home from work, or after a run (!), or during a date (?) — not only for one of the different kinds of turtle jellies, but for a healing tea, or bracing “liver detox” that tastes like a mix of wood polish with raw turnip. I get the “cough” one, which ends up being less bitter than the others with a slight peppermint aftertaste, palatable enough to eat half a cup of on a full stomach. Emboldened by the fact it isn’t as awful as I had originally envisioned, I even joke that I will be there the next morning to try it again. I don’t, though. I have braised beef brisket on silky egg noodles, because duh.

Tom yum pork noodles at Zaew Thonglor

Before I begin, I want to share with you what made my day today. It was this photo (via Jezebel via Getty):

I think it’s the expression on his face, the trying-to-be-serious look of a toddler told to pose nicely with his great-aunt for the family photo. It’s the expression of someone trying to do his duty, fer serious this time. It’s the look I have on my face right now.

One of my favorite movies ever is John Carpenter’s “The Thing”. I don’t watch it too often because I don’t want to get sick of it like I did with “Clueless”. But it should be no surprise that I love it as a movie that’s ripe to use as an analogy for basically anything, ever. If you haven’t seen it already (and why not, what’s wrong with you), it’s about an isolated bunch of guys stuck in Antarctica for science-wonky work and what hijinks ensue when a super-cool discovery made by nearby Norwegians turns into something not-so-cool when it starts eating people and assuming their identities.

It’s not as scary as Ridley Scott’s “Alien”, because it doesn’t hide and attack when you’re not looking. It’s right there, in front of you, pretending to be somebody you know. It’s only later, when it shows itself, that you realize how truly horrifying it is: an amalgam of everything you recognize, combined and twisted into something monstrous. It’s the familiarity — and constant evolution with each entity that it absorbs — that is scary. Even more terrifying is the fact that no one knows who the monster is, possibly not even the monster itself. This is the most familiar detail of all.

Everyone has encountered “The Thing” at least once in their life. It’s that person seated next to you at a dinner party who suddenly starts spouting off about crime in Chicago without warning before alighting on opinions about American race relations that would make anyone with ears (i.e. me) want to jump out a window immediately. It could be the random man at a party who walks up to me only to ask if it is true that prostitutes hold a high social status in Thailand. It could be the friend who congratulates you on your scholarship, but that it was obviously granted because I am Asian (at Stanford, because there aren’t enough Asians there). I’ve met “The Thing” a gazillion times, and like MacReady, I have never vanquished it.

There are food equivalents of “The Thing” too, of course. A well-reviewed Thai fried chicken restaurant with the requisite surface dinginess (and a Green Bowl seal of approval to boot) to signal its authenticity, it ends up offering you a paltry handful of dried-up wings in a tiny bread basket, a bland som tum barely baptized by seasoning, a cold catfish stir-fry tasting of mud. The truth is, there is no way to protect yourself from encountering “The Thing”. The only thing you can do is to minimize the risk, like shutting yourself up in your room and ordering takeout for the rest of your life.

In terms of food, at least, Zaew has you covered. There are actually a couple of noodle joints named Saew or Zaew within walking distance of my house alone; who knows how many Zaew there are peppering the country. In any event, it’s a fairly safe bet that a noodle shop named “Saew/Zaew” will serve a decently good bowl of noodles, and Zaew Thonglor (Sukhumvit Road between Thonglor and Soi 57, 02-391-0043) is no exception.

Yen ta fo (of course, my favorite bowl of noodles ever) can be a hard sell, what with its pink color, fermented tofu base and frequently over-sweet sauce. The very best versions I’ve had walk the tightrope between sweet-salty and tart-spicy. Here at Zaew there’s not even any pretense: no sweetness, just a tart-spicy mix leavened with squidgy meatballs and the occasional bit of pork fat crackling, the best part of all. It’s delicious in a way that is different from my favorite bowls. It might even be better.

Zaew’s more popular options include tom yum noodles with minced pork and fish  meatballs, or noodles made of processed fish in tom yum broth, or egg noodles and … you get the picture. But be warned: the portions are not only gargantuan by street food standards, but possibly by Thai standards in general. No need to order those two bowls all at once unless you are absolutely sure.

Zaew’s yen ta fo