Teluk Intan-Ipoh x AJNH (Day 1)

Hello and good day everyone!

This is my third post for Food Archeologist and apologies for being such an MIA (Missing in Action) person. Can't help it since I am stuck with uni life (assignments final exams bla bla bla) but now, I have a semester break! How cool is that?

P.s: This is my first semester where I look forward so much to a semester break. *hums away*

Anyway, back to food!

I have been outstation for the last weekend with my family to our yearly le family trip to Perak!
Every year I have perceived that Ipoh will be somewhat a dead place (I know I shouldn't say that but lots of my friends find Ipoh boring but I don't because I enjoyed the less crowd of that city), however, I was very disappointed with the crowd last weekend because we have decided to take the weekend to Ipoh on Raya Haji day, aka the PUBLIC HOLIDAY weekend. Ughh. First time came across such busy Ipoh. Lol. Which I was not too happy about it. Why? Because food will be a huge demand and you have to queue, or worse, WAIT in front of people's tables while they're eating. How rude is that? I had to fight for tables in one of the restaurants in Ipoh for breakfast! Not to mention a tug of war with a guy who stood on the same table as me. -_- I decided to let it a go when I later found out that my mum has a more daring approach of 'cop-ing' tables; by sitting in one of the tables. LOL.

Alright alright. Enough with all the fighting tables stories.

Day 1: Teluk Intan

Le family has decided to stay for 3 days 2 nights in Perak and our first pit stop of the night was Teluk Intan, formerly known as Teluk Anson. We left KL in late morning, we have reached our destination at about 3pm. No, we didn't take a tuk tuk ride to TI that took us that long to reach TI. We have stopped over at Bidor to have really really awesome lunch meal, Indian style! cooked and served by my mum's friend. They have such adorable baby that got close with my sister after getting bribed with candies, chipsmore's and chocolates. Hehe.

We stayed at a homestay and the cost per night for a room only costed RM40, with air-cond and two big beds and a toilet of your own. AND with toiletries. How cool is that? Not cool part though; we had to stay with a bunch of middle aged ol' chaps whom decided to 'greet' us in the living room wearing nothing but just shorts, kaki terkangkang (open up legs, one leg rested on the side of the chair) while one of them was rubbing his huge beer belly tummy. It was horrifying. I got freaked out. It was not a pleasant sight. Kinda killed my food mode for dinner. Lol.

Nevertheless, we took a rest and we left the house early at about 6pm to scout for dinner in the old Glutton Square, TI.
Trust me, this place packs with loads of good hidden treasures. Nyam nyam.

The outside of Glutton Square Food Court where we had our dinner.

Outside of the GS

Upon entrance. Reminds me little of Singapore's food court style. Or any Malaysian Food Court style. Lol.

Mmm. The dessert stall where we ordered one of every kind of their desserts. It is called Do Re Mi.

One of the guys working on our desserts. I think it is run by one family.

One part seen from the inside of GS

Glutton Square as I realised has irregular hours of operating hours for the stalls. Some open in the morning, few open in the afternoon and the others open in the evening. So, you may or may not be able to get the food you want based on such timeline, which will be inconvenient for some who travels to TI just to savor some of the food I soon to cover. :p

TI Laksa with prawn sauce. RM3. Not bad. It is not spicy but yet has the authenticity of the laksa taste. I like it and they are generous in their portions too.

This, I tell you. IS the best yau char kuay in town. Probably in whole of Malaysia! KL cannot find this! (well, if some of you do, do let me know!). Its so crispy to the extend to every bite into your mouth, and the taste is almost melting. Although this Chinese delicacy is fully deep fried into hot pan of oil, you have little to taste it and you can't stop eating it until well, you're sick of it. Not too healthy anyway. Haha. RM0.70 each. There are many variants and one my family favorite is the 'butterfly' style, or they call it the horse leg. I forgot what they call it in Cantonese.Why horse leg? I also don't know. Let me know the history of it if any of you knew. Sells out really quick and we tried to buy it the next day in the afternoon but I think it was closed, seen from afar. :(

Mm.mm.mm. Doesn't this picture of our local dessert ABC makes you drool? Okay, not on a rainy and chilly weather like we're having these past few days but this sure is the perfect thirst quencher for all Malaysians on a typical hot weather! We didn't even buy any drinks. Just had 'em all desserts. This I think costs RM3. Not too bad huh? Supposed to be the famous one in the whole area. To me, it was just fine, with the sugar and sweetness level just up to my par and the additional ingredients seemed to be fresh and appealing. This stall has good presentation skills. I like. Wait till you see the others.

The No. 1 dessert of all. Presenting the Sai Mai Lou (Shaved Ice with Honey Dew). Notice the ice is a little different compared to other desserts available in this stall. This use a finer version of shaved ice, rather than the typical ABC ice shaving machine that gives a rougher texture of the ice. This however, is the soft type, which means that it is delicately thinly sliced of ice into this bowl of mashed awesomeness. Or was it simply just normal shaved ice but this has managed to melt my heart? I ain't too sure now. On top of that, the milk they used is amazing, perfectly complimenting the taste of the honey dew syrup they used. And that generous amount of sago as the top of the cherry and precisely placed balls of watermelon, longan and pineapples, what else are you asking for? This I think costs a bit more, about RM3-RM3.20.

On the contrary, this provides the worst taste of all. I mean, there is nothing special to it. And I think this costs the most expensive because apparently there are more fruits served in it. But other than that, its just ice. Plain ice. How disappointing. This is called the Mix Fruit Lolo. Nothing to fancy about unless you want to eat plain ice with fruits. :/ There is a bit of sourness to it so I am guessing they used small lime (limau) for a bit of taste. P.s: I used the word think because I kinda got mixed up with their pricing. Sorry for that! Will further explain how the price works below.

This is the sour version of the Lolo. It is called the Ai Yu Ping Lolo. It is called that way because of the lemon jelly on top. The sourness comes from the assam boi, but to me, I'd rather have it a stronger assam taste to it because overall it tasted rather mild to me. I like sour stuffs and this is not up to my par. This one is served with longans and even bigger longan! Lol.

This is called the Hawaiian Lolo. Not bad because the syrup they used was passion fruit and I love passion fruit. A fruit that is hard to come by nowadays and with good tasting natural ones. This one is added with some homemade jellies and a huge longan at the top.

Hawaiian Lolo taking the full frontal picture.

All le 5 lolos on picture!

Ahh. Char Keow Teow. Another sinful food we all love. This CKT is cooked to perfection, to the finest and one of the most distinctive complimentary ingredient to all CKTs', the cockerels, or also known as the 'Si Ham'. This CKT has the cockerels cooked a little that gives a more meaty taste to it rather than half of the CKT I ate are served raw. The cockerels are also very fresh and my mum, who is not a 'Si Ham' fan, apparently likes it very much. The overall taste of the CKT has a burnt taste to it, but a good type of burnt taste, not too heavy, just enough to actually think it was cooked through charcoal fire. Yums. This dish only costs RM3. CKT in KL can easily be found, and also can be easily charged as much as RM5-RM10 per plate, depending on locations. Cheap much? Yes, oh yes.

This is a huge disappointment. For RM3.50, this 'Kon Lou Mee', or also can be called as wanton mee can easily be found at any parts of KL. Heck, even KL can serve better ones. Lousy presentation and their preserved green chillies got us to think whether they're gonna get us tummy sick. And don't you think the wantons looked damn sad too? Lol.

Okay, about the pricing for the lolo's (shaved ice desserts as shown above) I admit, I messed up on the pricing. All I know for the price of the 5 lolos' we ate it had sum up to about RM13+. Each bowl costs from RM3-RM3.20. That's all I can remember.

Done with dinner (not really!), off we tried our luck on the oh-so-famous midnight chee cheong fun. Dad says there are two very famous brands that sell the midnight chee cheong fun but we only managed to scout for one, the other we couldn't locate in time. :(
For all of you who don't know what is midnight chee cheong fun and what is the difference between our usual chee cheong fun and also hong kong chee cheong fun is that one; you can only find it at night, usually in the wee hours of the morning which is from 12am onwards, but in my case, my dad knew the factory and we headed straight there to buy the freshly made ones and two; the special ingredients they used for the chee cheong fun and finally three; it does not have a sauce, instead, we eat it with juicy, crispy salted/preserved green chillies.

Random photo: Spotted the moon falling directly to the the mosque's head piece.

The Liew Kee Chee Cheong Fun

Processing rice into liquids for later make into yummy chee cheong fun!

They have people queuing at the factory as early as 7pm. Yeah, this is the factory.

Interesting sight to see right opposite of the factory. Now I kinda reconsider the cleanliness of the factory. On the other hand, the factory employees can save their time and just throw their rubbish over.

They are called 'Sa Kot' in Hakka, or also called as turnips. Part of the ingredients to make the midnight chee cheong fun.

This is the packet size and they wrap it ol' style, newspaper style.

Opening up

Ta-da! The black spots you see are the onions, small prawns and some meat, which I think is pork

The salted green chillies to compliment the taste. Too bad they are so kiam siap (kedekut/ stingy) about their green chillies. Very very little, compared to the size of the chee cheong fun.

Closer look of the chee cheong fun.

This whole packet costs RM4 and to me, it is rather pricy for a small packet like that. And according to my dad, TI midnight chee cheong fun is not supposed to be rectangular based, more of the elongated and thin version. They also said that within a short span of few years, the chee cheong fun has rose from RM2.80 per packet up to RM4 as of now. For the locals, they will think the quality has degraded. I have not tasted midnight chee cheong fun for awhile now and my vague memory of it is just the green chillies.
When I first try it, I like it but it was a little too oily for my take. The overall taste was alright, not too heavy on each other, I kinda forgot to taste if there is any turnip taste in it. Also, the green chillies given are just too little! I know it is good, with its juicy and crunchy texture but don't be so hard on the quantity already. You're already charging us RM4, at least we deserve a little more of the chillies next time?

Oh, for another surprising news, when we went out to Jalan Maharani (the next day) for breakfast, it was found out that Liew Kee has many vendors and resellers for them in stalls located in many areas, and Jalan Maharani was one of them. The shocking news is that, we found out that in one stall they are selling RM3 per packet and the other end selling RM4 per packet! Imagine it from the same factory who manufactured it. Guys, you gotta have some standard pricing over here.
If we do drop by next time in TI, we'd definitely have our mental note taken to just head back to stalls and buy it at RM3 per packet, rather than buying it at the factory. As for freshness, I am pretty sure there is nothing much of a difference, unless you have a mentality that you need to consume food with 'freshly served' motto in your head.


Okay, this will be the end of Day 1 post. Continuation of the Jalan Maharani food search will be on the 2nd post where I will be covering the last part of Teluk Intan and off to Ipoh food!

Hope you guys enjoy the pictures and descriptions as much as I do. Because all the pictures taken were used to be in my tummy. LOL.

P.s: I am afraid that this post I won't be providing most details of the stalls (exact location with address, contact numbers and google maps) as I am not too familiar with the rounds of TI and Ipoh myself.
But the landmarks are pretty much there from the pictures and Glutton Square is a name that I think you can find easily on Google for directions to go there. Don't get confused though. They have the new and the old Glutton Square Food Court. We went the old Glutton Square Food Court.
Teluk Intan has a lot of food to find, just don't underestimate the overall look of the city. Even I know I have not fully explored TI yet.

Cheers to all of you and have a safe trip! (If you have any plans to go there in future)
Be right back on the second post soon.