Street food worth going back for

Passport & Plate - Char Kuey Teow

Malaysia | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 3 photos

Ingredients

4 tbsp vegetable oil, or if you're feeling brave, pork fat
4 cloves garlic, very finely diced
1 lap cheong (chinese sausage) thinly sliced on the diagonal
half a long fish cake, thinly sliced
9 fresh prawns, shelled with the tail on
1 packet bean sprouts
4 tsp sambal oelek
4 eggs
small handful of Chinese flat chives, cut into 2" lengths
1 packet flat rice noodles, 'stir fry' type

for the sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tbsp hot water
5 tablespoons soy sauce
1½ tablespoons Cheong Chan cooking caramel, or dark soy sauce
½ teaspoon fish sauce (optional)

Every time I land in Kuala Lumpur, I do the same thing. I drop my bags off, drive a half hour out of town to a small, run down hawker food court in a neighbourhood simply called Section 17. I couldn't tell you what the name of the food court is, though I know it has one. I am here looking for Robert's Noodles, because he makes the best char kuey teow in town.

I don't know when the ritual started but on my one of my many flights through Malaysia, a friend brought me here. It was stinking hot and the last thing I wanted was food. We sat down, nods were exchanged and before you know it, a plate of fried noodles so hot from the wok that you could see the steam coming off them was placed in front of me. I reluctantly picked up my chopsticks.

It was so good that I came back the next day (thank goodness for Google Maps). And the day after that. By then, the man didn't have to ask for my order any more - he knew I wanted a small char kuey teow with no cockles because I'm allergic. On busy days, when the line of customers snaked around the side of the stall, I suspect that he short-cutted my order through the queue . I came back on the next trip.

There was almost always a line, but in the quiet times, we'd talk. Turns out his name wasn't actually Robert, though he had responded readily enough to it. I'd been calling him Robert for almost three years by then. Not-Robert says it's hard work. He works twelve hours a day and each plate of noodles is always fried individually, to order. Robert was his brother in law, who started the stall. The original Robert had gotten the recipe for the sauce from his father. They'd make it up in big batches at the end of every night, ready for the next day of trade. One day, he asks me to bring him a small mineral water bottle.

He takes it from me, fills it with sauce and tells me that I can now make my own char kuey teow in Australia. That bottle ran out long ago, but it began am obsession with recreating a simple plate of noodles.