I am not a breakfast person. I know, I know. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Once upon a time, it was the first meal until I began to get stomach discomfort right after having it. This went one for several weeks. I have skipped breakfast since. I never found out the cause of the problem though.

My cousin Peter introduced me to this quaint little kopitiam called Joo Leong Cafe at Sungai Tiram on the way to the Penang International Airport. It serves seafood porridge and noodle in the evening. They had fish maw which is one of my favourite. I usually had it with sliced fish in piping hot porridge. There were also several stalls selling jiu hu eng chai (cuttle fish and kangkung in thick sauce), yim kuk kai (salt-baked chicken) and satay.

Other than porridge and noodles, they also served toasts. I prefer thick toasts over sliced ones. Joo Leong uses Hailam bread which is bread with its crust removed. The bread is toasted and generously slathered with butter and sprinkled with granulated sugar. Toasts and porridge is an odd combination especially for dinner. I was soon initiated into it and could not stop eating the first time I had it.

For breakfast, the toasts are served with half-boiled eggs. The taste of buttered toasts dipped in the eggs is simply heavenly. This is one breakfast that is worth having a stomach upset over. Wuan likes the packed nasi lemak and fried noodles too. Each time we are in Penang, we would try to make time to drop in either for breakfast or dinner. I am already salivating at the thought of sinking my teeth into the toasts when we get to Penang next week.

It was silly of me to still think that only Penang has the best hawker food anywhere in Malaysia. Penang used to have hawker food that tasted really nice. Among my favourites are hokkien mee, kali mee, wantan mee, popiah and char kuey teow. Over the years, especially since I moved down to Kuala Lumpur, I have come to realise that the hawker food in my little island paradise do not taste as good as it used to be anymore during those few trips back.

In my opinion, the major cause of this is the ingredients. In the olden days, the hawkers prepared all the essential ingredients by themselves. They pounded the chilies, made the pastes and soup stock, deep-fried the shallots and even made the noodles used in their trades. This made the taste of their respective food unique only to them.

In contrast, many hawkers nowadays buy ready-made ingredients such as chili paste, noodles and even deep-fried shallots to cut down on preparation time and cost. That special touch in making the taste unique is lost. The ingredients used by one hawker is used by a few others who get their supplies from the same wholesaler. Mass production in the name of economy of scale is slowly killing what Penang has been famous for.

Once in a while, I still pine for the hokkien mee that the uncle sporting a crew cut hawked beside the bus stop opposite the PBA (Pihak Berkuasa Air) in Rifle Range. The spicy prawn and pork bone-based soup was simply delicious. Thinly sliced prawns and pork were generously added into the noodles. That was when I was still in primary school. Those were the days when hawkers went the extra mile to ensure that they put in only the best ingredients. How I miss those times.

Little Penang Kafe Acar Fish Set - (from top clockwise) Acar fish, jiu hoo char, sambal belacan, sliced cucumber, lor bak and white rice.

Whenever I have a pining for home-cooked food Penang style, there are only a few eateries in the Klang Valley that can satiate my appetite. Little Penang Kafé, which has several outlets here, is the one Wuan and I usually head to. The outlet we frequent often is at Mid Valley Megamall as we hang out there a lot on weekends. Each time we ate there, I resolved to try something different but invariably settled for the Acar Fish Set consisting of white rice, acar fish, jiu hoo char and lor bak. The other two outlets we pop in whenever we are in the vicinity are at Suria KLCC and The Curve.

Acar fish is fish slices that are deep-fried and then pickled in rice vinegar, turmeric, julienned ginger, sliced garlic and red chilli. Jiu hoo char is dried cuttle fish yam bean (sengkuang) and carrots that are julienned and stir fried together with belly pork, sliced shiitake mushrooms, onions and chopped garlic. Lor bak is chopped belly pork marinated with five spice powder, soya sauce, sugar, salt, pepper and shallots and made into rolls with bean curd sheets.

Little Penang Kafe serves halal food. The belly pork in jiu hoo char and lor bak are replaced with chicken. Both dishes without belly pork just do not feel as authentic as they should be in the mouth. The lor bak still maintains the aroma and flavour and is delicious nonetheless. The jiu hoo char has prawns added and is garnished with spring onions and deep fried shallots. The jiu hoo char that I like neither comes with prawns nor have garnishing. Perhaps it was added more for presentation purposes than anything else. I would have loved it more had it been stir fried longer to bring out its flavour. I usually eat the jiu hoo char with sambal belacan.

I grew up eating a hodgepodge of Peranakan (Nyonya) cuisine. These are usually served on weekends when the family got together for more scrumptious meals. It included nasi lemak, laksa, popiah, lam mee, lor bak, jiu hoo char, otak-otak and perut ikan, among others. Different cooks would use different amount of ingredients or even use slightly different ingredients that may make the taste varied and unique. The tastes that I like are more mainstreamed. That is what one would get from hawkers and eateries proffering such cuisines.

Wuan and I made a quick trip to Penang last Friday evening. I needed to sign some legal documents pertaining to my apartment. We started our journey at 11pm. I drove all the way to this island that I used to call home. Somewhere at the Rawang Rest and Service Area, I nearly crashed into a barrel that was resting indiscriminately in the middle of the expressway. The barrel was used as a barrier for upgrading works along many stretches of the expressway and was somehow knocked off the side of the road and rolled into the middle.

We reached Penang safely at 4am on Saturday. Slept at 5am. Woke up at 8am. Met lawyer at 11am. Signed the documents and left Penang at around 2pm - not before we went to Macalister Road for 2 boxes of Ghee Hiang’s tau sah pneah. The tau sah pneah are pastry balls with green bean paste filling. Peter, wife and their grandson hitched a ride with us. They wanted to go to Kajang where Elaine, their daughter, is residing now. We turned into Ipoh town to buy the famous Gunung Rapat beh teh soh - flaky pastry with molasses filling - the best I have eaten so far.

We then had dinner at one of the popular restaurants in Tanjung Malim. The menu was braised tofu with dried shrimps and minced pork gravy, deep-fried pig’s trotter, steamed fish and sitr-fried kangkung sambal belacan. For the price we paid, I would expect the food to taste better. I will not be returning to that place for food anytime soon.

After we dropped Peter and family off at Kajang, we reached home at about 12 midnight. It was one of the most tiring road trips Wuan and I have ever taken. We covered nearly 1,000km in 24 hours. Nevertheless, it was a trip well worth the time because I have accomplished what I was in Penang for - one of the few outstanding issues that I had promised Mum I will clear up shortly before she passed away.

For the first time in our seven-year relationship, Wuan got a taste of my culinary skills. It was nothing elaborate – rice, stir-fried vegetables and ABC soup. That was what I usually cook for myself. I wanted to show her how I manage in the kitchen. It was also a refreshing change from her having to wake up at five in the morning to cook for me. I did the washing up too. Cleaning dishes and cooking utensils was as unpleasant as before but that was something that needed to be done no matter what. Still, it was a gratifying afternoon. I hope I can be as upbeat when she goes back to Kuala Lumpur this weekend.