The Last Supper

A few nights ago my Asian Street Food experience came to an end on a Kuala Lumpur back street. We'd taken an overpriced taxi from our hotel to a reputable street food market in the Kampung Baru area of the city, only to find that a public holiday the previous day had curtailed the night market, meaning a rapidly dwindling pool of vendors. Ignoring the satay stalls and cat calls from the adjoining restaurants, I quickly settled on a popular noodle stall and it's smiling Malay vendor for what was to be my parting shot.

This was classic one dish one vendor stuff, cooked on a huge, circular pan and served in hot, heavy paper parcels like fish and chips. The noodles were a wide and flat runway variety, reminiscent of a rogue strain of linguine, and had been mixed in with liberal amounts of beansprouts, chili and soy sauce.



The result was a dish that was more texture than flavour. The chili and soy sauce were good, but it was the juxtaposition of the smooth, soft, slightly sticky flat noodles and the crunchy, fresh beansprouts that piqued my interest. Faced with this mean pair, the flavours sidled off into the background and kept their presence to mere taste bud fodder. I gobbled the lot right there on the sidewalk (sorry, pavement) then went to buy some fake DVDs

I felt that this was a good dish to end on. It was simple stuff - quick, sustaining and unpretentious, and the type of thing that I'd be pushed to find any other place at any other time. I loved the rusticity of the serving methods and the fact that it only cost about 20p.

I'm in London now, and its going to be interesting to see how the street food here compares. Next stop Borough market!