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THERE CAN BE  little argument that the two hallmark hawker dishes of Penang are ch'ar koay teow and hokkien mee soup.And there are some who say one cannot claim to be a true Penangite unless you have either dish at least once a week! From the late Seventies right up to the mid-Nineties, the place to have char koay teow was China Street. About 200 yards up from the Goddess of Mercy Temple, a battle royal raged between two rival fryers.

I was introduced to the first by my late see-foo (master) whose wife owned a small printing press (Commercial Printers) which specialised in making Chinese-style calendars and those brown-paper carrier bags (with red lettering) that we found in every sundry shop before the advent of the hated plastic.

Lee Ying was one of the most colourful characters in China Street: an ex-journalist, a raconteur, an impressario who brought in Taiwanese and Hong Kong singers for charitable events; he was also stage manager for Rose Chan in the late Fifties. Besides introducing me to the then famous Boon Siew koay teow, he also introduced me to the legendary stripper and a thousand and one other delights. But that, as they say is another story ...

Situated in a small coffee-shop next to the Commercial Printers, this koay teow took its name from the late Penang tycoon/philanthropist Loh Boon Siew. Yes, the very same Tan Sri whose lasting legacy to our island is that noisy battalion of Honda motorbikes that clog and pollute our streets daily!  Twice a week our recluse tycoon would have his chauffeur-driven Mercedes deposit him at this coffee-shop registered as Kedai Kopi Sin Chuan Bee though we all referred to it as Commercial Coffeeshop. In a corner table, Tan Sri Jabrani would savour his koay teow in splendid isolation, wash it down with a pot of Chinese tea and have his chauffeur pick him up forty minutes later. There is no evidence that Boon Siew endorsed or recommended this koay teow to anybody but his patronage was advertisement enough. Furthermore, this particular koay teow needed no endorsement from any Jabrani as it as simply superb in its own right.

The fryer was a guy called Tan who wore trademark white shorts and a Pagoda-brand singlet. No matter how rushed or how long the queue, he prepared each serving individually using all the essential ingredients i.e. prawns, krang(cockles), wafer-thin slices of lap-cheong (Chinese sausage), koo chye (chives), tau-geh (bean sprouts) with a sprinkle of deep-fried pork fat bits. Egg, as usual, was optional.Our Pagoda-vested man also catered to individual whims and fancies which, in our case meant extra koo chye and chillie.
 

The rivalry between these two establishments was so fierce that the old lady would often not serve you (or deliberately pretend she did not hear your order!) if she knew you were a regular patron of  The Other. And the patrons themselves caught up in this battle; with the clientele of one stall often sneering at the clientele of the other, swearing the they knew NOTHING about Penang char koay teow!

In the early Nineties, Tan's koay-teow suddenly disappeared. Rumour had it that our Pagoda man had received a rather substantial gratuity from the tycoon and its anybody's guess whether he ended up in Boon Siew's kitchen or selling Hondas in Kuala Ketil ....

The old couple now had a free run of China Street but; much as in love with my char koay teow, I didn't  dare patronise their stall.as I was too well known in the area as Lee's protege and Tan's regular customer. It was only a few years later, when I was formally introduced to the couple by our old Geography Teacher (who used to meet up with his friends in the shop for coffee and koay teow after their early morning walk along the Esplanade), that I first tasted their koay teow. And I was promptly hooked ... family and friends (from all over the country) were duly taken for a sampling and they too got hooked.

From as far as Batu Ferringhi and Bayan Lepas, hotel managers, staff and factory personnel made the long trek down to Georgetown to sample our couple's char koay teow delightfully served on a square of banana leaf that adds that special fragrance.
Friends from K.L. begged me to tar pau a couple of packets for them whenever I went down. Needless to say the couple were making money hand over fist. So much so, a couple of years ago they decided to retire. 

A very young couple, perhaps their grandchildren, took over the business. To put it mildly, they were goddamn awful! We petitioned the shop-owners to bring the old couple back ... The old couple were hauled out of retirement but only to train the young couple in the finer points of koay teow frying. After a couple of weeks of coaching, the young couple could do a more than edible koay teow and business began to pick up. Then suddenly after Chinese New Year, this year, they disappeared 

And so the grand era of China Street char koay teow has come to an end. Blackdog and his kakis, however, still patronise this corner coffee-shop, officially registered in the name of Hick Leong Yan Cafe and run by 3 generations of women,  the proprietress, her mother and daughter. We go there these days not so much for the food but for the ambience, the old style marble top tables, the rickety wooden chairs, the high ceiling, the beer, the nostalgia and memories ...

But if you do decide to visit, try the excellent curry mee topped with a garden of mint!