KL

we reeled from meal to meal, guided the electronic voices of a thousand malaysian food bloggers.  bat kut teh, a sort of pork-rib soup in rich herbal broth, supposedly with medicinal properties beyond mere deliciousness ...  hokkien mee, KL style, is pan-fried in dark, sweet-salty sauce, with cabbage and tiny chunks of fried pork lard (is there any other kind?) ... fried beef hor fun:  slippery rice noodles in shiny beefy egg gravy ... sang har meen: thin meehoon noodles cooked then dry-fried so that some are soft, others delightfully crispy, a couple huge prawns perched on top, and the whole pile drenched in prawny creamy saute.  the man manning the huge outdoor woks for these noodles had close-cropped grey hair, large forearms, and a laconic ease that spoke years of experience.  i saw him pluck a fingerful of these noodles from a pile, pop it in his mouth, and chew with great satisfaction.  if this guy can make a dish six days a week for twenty years and he still can't resist a little taste ... well, then.  dim sum at the jw marriot shanghai: massively soupy xiao long bao, the best prawn dumplings ever (somehow narrowly beating out the previous #1 at crystal jade palace in singapore) ... cheong fun stir-fried with shrimp paste is china's definitive answer to parisian gnocci, pillowy soft and just a hint of crisp on the outside.  my quest to recreate the perfect nasi kerabu (experienced for the first, and lamentably possibly the only, time in kota bahru, in the far northeast of malaysia) continued, only to end after a monorail-ride to random-town, and some serious wandering about ("is this jalan sultan sulaiman?  ok, good, and there's TAR.  is it this hawker or the one to the left?  well, the one to the left is closer to the post office, and that blog said the place was right across from it, so let's give it a shot ... wait, aren't they supposed to have solok lada?  ... ").  back to jalan alor for the best chicken wings of all time; to the chinese cruller lady's stall for batch after batch of fried dough in four sinisterly-tasty differently-shaped varieties, grown men squabbling over the last bits of a favorite.  and of course, at every opportunity, malls to street stalls, every delicious colorful flavor of sticky nyonya kuih. 

walking down jalan dangwangi, it was immediately obvious where to go: malaysians love their food, and anyplace with a queue is 100% worth trying, even if every food blogger imaginable had not already choked on fulsome praises for yut kee coffee shop.  the place had a serious queue.  a young-looking guy wearing no uniform but an obvious mantle of competence points at whoever he thinks is the leader of a particular pack of folk. "you?  six?  name please."  to the man in front of us: "you?  two.  name please."  he glances my way, i hold up two fingers, and as we are the only gringos in the mix, he doesn't bother with name.  the space is an open-fronted coffeeshop, full of round tables, with three printed menus on the walls, a little wooden counter up front with homemade snack cakes and kaya jam on display, a big mirror, surrounded by dark wood frame, on the west wall that we sit under.  a portrait of yut kee's founder -- great grandpa, according to our dining companion michael, who (lucky) works nearby and gets to come for lunch on a regular basis -- surveys his realm from behind wire-rimmed glasses.  dad is working the cash register while mom packs cakes for takeaway; and son, who didn't need to take our names, is scurrying around, expediting, a dead ringer for his ancestor.  as it turns out, he went to buffalo for university, quite enjoyed the cold weather, and seems skeptical of any decent malaysian food to be found stateside.  our coffee is tooth-achingly sweet, and the kind of strong that revs both brain cells and bowels into instant high gear.  tom heroically orders both a pork chop (the #1 choice here by far, scanning the plates of other diners) and a roti babi (sort of a chinese-style pulled pork filling surrounded by fried porky bread that somehow manages to be lightly fluffy).  i've got the belachan fried rice and a piece of kaya cake, and some bits of french toast (basically fried bread with coconut-egg-palm sugar jam) that michael graciously shares with us.  without a trace of irony, he offers up the toast, saying that he and vivian have more than enough food ... apparently not noticing that tom and i have, literally, half again as much in front of us.  we are thrilled and satisfied as we toddle out the front door and the only reason we don't return the next day (despite quite a full food calendar) is because yut kee is closed on mondays.

however, we do go back on tuesday.

i sort of hope that indonesian food doesn't match up.  i could use some rest.