Met up with James over lunch in PJ. He suggested Chicken Rice near his work place and so I made my way to PJ after spending the morning in KL downtown and the Central Market. I wanted to post yet another non-food entry but decided, no, I should just stick to food!

If I recall correctly, this restaurant is called the New Ipoh Chicken Rice. In chinese, it’s better known as nga-choy-gai (chicken with bean sprout), This is a typical Hainanese Chicken Rice dish.

The bean sprout is a specialty of Ipoh which produces beansprouts quite unlike those you find elsewhere in the country. Ipoh people believes that this is because the hard water in Ipoh makes their beansprouts particularly tastier.

We had a choice of the normal farmed chicken or the kampung (village) chicken. The kampung chicken are leaner because they are not couped up in dens and are left to run freely. We ordered the kampung chicken to share.

I ordered their “oiled” rice (yow-fun). It’s steamed rice and mixed with the chicken fat. It give a really nice aroma and flavour.

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It must have been a special birthday for my mum this year. It had been many years since she had all her three children present to celebrate her birthday. I can see the gladness in her eyes that I was there this year.

To me, my mum had gone through a lot. I did witness some ups and downs. She was never a person who would let us know her problems — I wish she would be open. I will always remember her sacrifices for me and making sure that I had what I needed over her own needs. She does not ask for much at all.

When I was in my teens, I had a serious car accident in which I almost died. Mum was there in the hospital with me every day — even though she had to travel almost a hundred kilometers to bring me lunch. That is because she wanted me to have better food than what was served in the hospital.

My brother bought a coffee flavoured birthday cake for her. My sister came around too with her kids. So did my dad’s youngest sister. I can guess what her birthday wish was for … must have been wishes for others more than for herself!

After the cake at home, we decided to go out for dinner. For nostalgia sake, we decided on going to a favourite restaurant of ours. Leong Ya had been in business since I was really young. I remember that the family took a long drive on weekends every now and then. Back then Leong Ya operated from a shack and their specialty was Yong Tau Foo and Paper Wrapped Chicken. Their business grew over the years until the time when they moved to a building of their own. Their business was so good that one had to endure long waits for a table and then wait for like 30 minutes before they come by to take our orders!

However, Leong Ya had seen better times. They are now operating from a shoplot and a lot more smaller than it used to be. When we were there, there were only four tables of customers. The guy who come around to take our orders (yeah, the one who we had to wait for 30 minutes!), is still there.

We ordered some Yong Tau Foo, which is a variety of fish paste filled food.

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When I young, I remember going out occasionally with my parents for breakfast in chinese coffee shops. Such coffee shops are better known as kopitiam. Back then, breakfast was just simple toast and a cup of coffee served in white porcelain cups. I still remember going to the kopitiams, half-asleep and groggy, and smelling the sweet aroma of coffee and toast.

Over the years, that kind of a breakfast fell out of fashion. There were more breakfast choices — noodles, nasi lemak, roti and such. On my visit, I noticed that such a coffee shops made a come back, albeit in much swankier settings. I made it a point to check out the Old Town Kopitiam one morning and went to the one in the Central Market.

There seems to be one Old Town Kopitiam in every shopping complex. I think it’s a franchise of sorts. The settings is undoubtedly a lot more comfortable and clean.

The tables and chairs are even old fashion white marble tops. They did not spare the details with the decor.

The coffee is served in the old fashioned white porcelain cup and saucer. For a time, it was almost impossible to buy these kind of cups because it was so old fashioned. Today, they are back in rage. Like the coffee I clearly remember, they had to be filled to overflowing leaving a sticky mess on the outside of the cup! The coffee I ordered is the Ipoh White Coffee — it’s rich and made even richer with condensed milk. Those days they were brewed using a sock (well, a sock-like sieve).

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