Ipoh's lost culinary delights !

When I was a teen in Ipoh we had access to some of the finest hawker foods sold in the most unique way.There was no hawker centre that time and these vendors sold their food in a very special way ...they came right to your doorstep. 1.My favorite those days was the char koy teow stall aka Spider because the man fried the noodles with two ladles, very fast and plate by plate.His specialty was the concave wok which was testimonial to its heavy usage.The other was his chillies which went into the frying.He used to scold me whenever I asked for more spoons of chillies to be thrown into the frying saying that I eat more chillies than his koay teow. The noodles were fried with taugeh ( Very fat and crispy ) and you have a choice of with or without eggs.The eggs used were duck eggs and also the chicken eggs. You can use your own eggs , something which we often did. Spider came by our house twice a day , once in the afternoon and once at night.He was quite punctual and it was an interesting sight to see us waiting for him to come with plates and eggs in hand.He was very fast and had a regular frying routine, first ,the oil and garlic, followed by the taugeh and soya sauce and after that the chillies and then the cockles and finally the noodles and viola... the best char koay teow in the world. Sad to say today there is no koay teow dish any where near to this.Even the famous Penang char koay teow is nowhere near this. A famous Ipoh dish gone because there was no handing over of the trade. 2.The tok tok mee. A stall selling wan tan mee would come by at night and the appearance of the stall would be signalled by the vendor making the 'tok tok ' sound with two small pieces of bamboo which he knocked together to make the tok tok sound. 3. The nyonya kueh man. This guy would carry two baskets balanced on a long pole over his shoulders and mind you , he walks.He had a fantastic choice of nyonya kueh from pulot udang,layered kueh,ang koo,tapioca kueh and on top of all this you can also get a steaming bowl of Penang laksa.This vendor was a mamak and we often asked him how come he sold nyonya kueh ?He never answered our question. 4.The ice cream man .He would come round on his bicycle ringing the bell to signal his arrival and for 5 cents you get a chance to spin a wheel which would determine how many ice cream you got and it was pretty novel and we kids love to have a chance to spin the wheel of ice cream hoping to get more than one ice cream cone . 5.There was this ice kachang stall in Cowan Street which served the best ABC as we now call it. For 20 or 30 cents a bowl you get the best ice kachang with or without ice cream and lots of condensed milk and gula melaka or sarsi flavoured sugar . 6. Of course there was also the famous Capital theatre hor hee which you cannot get to even taste nowadays. 7. The Ipoh clock tower nasi kandar was the first of its kind in Ipoh at that time .For less than RM1 you get a big plate of curry rice with chicken , beef and fish plus a bit of vegetables.Today you can still find some of these stalls but they do not serve the food like they used to. 8.Along Theatre Street there were two sisters who served the best beef noodles.Surprisingly they are still in business and believe it or not the beef noodles sold today are still the same.They have a stall opposite the former Odeon Cinema which has a bustling hawker center at night.This is perhaps the only one of the old stalls left and the two sisters are still selling the noodles. 9.For mamak mee lovers there nothing like the one located at the Cathay restaurant along Jalan Yang Kalsom.Sad to say the present operator does not fry the noodles like before. 10. For Indian rojak there was this stall beside the Coronation Park. The sauce and the sotong makes the dish so special .You cannot find another of this kind of stall today. Looking back , we were fortunate to enjoy some of the best Ipoh food during our time.What is unique was that all these food were individually prepared and there was a kind of special rapport between the seller and us.Spider for example , would know exactly the way I liked my koay teow fried and he would jokingly ask me " Is your stomach still there ?"Today hawker food is all located in hawker centers and this perhaps in a way takes out some of the fun in enjoying hawker food !We had it, we loved it and we enjoyed the best of Ipoh hawker food .