Penang Street Foods

Older generation people must eat birthday mee (or seh jit mee) on their birthday. If I am not mistaken, this is more of a Hokkien tradition as there is another type of Teochew birthday mee. This noodle has the Nyonya influence as it uses sambal belacan.

Why do people eat birthday mee? The noodle is long and hence, it signifies old age (long long time to live).

I haven’t had nice lam mee for a long time already because most stalls are very stingy with the prawns. Nowadays, they use a few slices of fish cakes or fake crabsticks. However, this stall, Ah Lim Birthday Mee garnished the noodle with two very firm and fresh prawns.

A plate costs RM3.00.

The soup is very sweet without the strong MSG flavour. They must have slow boiled pork bones to get that sweetness. I also like the authentic pinkish slivers of eggs. I could never get my eggs fried this thin and sliced so uniformly.

The sambal belacan is also very kickass. Beside this, they also put some soya sauce pork cooked with tong chai. I have never seen pork cooked this way before. Nice.

The coffee shop is located at the corner of Jalan Macalister and Jalan Krian. Jalan Krian is near the junction of Anson Road, where 8-row (the old heritage buildings turned into restaurants) is. The coffee shop does not have any other food stalls except a Pei Tan (century egg) porridge stall and roti bakar.

My little boy enjoyed his roti bakar and half boiled egg. I went to the kitchen to ‘inspect’ and didn’t see any toaster. I believe they must have used charcoal to toast the bread.

It was a cold, rainy afternoon and eating lam mee with lots of sambal belacan was so comforting. Just like olden times when my mother used to cook this noodle.

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