Lam Ah Beef Koay Teow Th'ng of Lebuh Pantai

"The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk."

Ogden Nash, American poet

Yesterday, I went on a foot tour of Georgetown, or at least most of it. Consequently, my limbs are a lot browner now while my trunk is still pretty damn fair. If I go shirtless on a beach I’ll probably just get burned at my whiter bits. Once, I wore a T-shirt with a wider than usual neckline and I received a painful necklace-shaped sunburn around my neck. I looked real funny then – brown, red and white. I wish I have a picture of it.

Anyway, the walking trip is a pretty boring subject to write about – so I won’t do that. What I’ll do instead is do a food review of this place I hit while I was there,

Lam Ah Coffee Shop.

This place is ridiculously easy to find even without a map. I just got off the ferry jetty, walked blindly in a south-westerly direction for about 5 minutes and stumbled right on it without making a single false turn. It’s at the crossroad between Lebuh Chulia and Lebuh Pantai, right opposite the fire station. Ask directions to the fire station if you must.

So what’s good there, I hear you asking.

It's this,

Beef koay teow thng.

Not that it needs anymore description but it was really, really good. The pinkish, thinly-sliced beef strips were tender and not overcooked, and they soaked up a lot of the soup’s flavour. It’s a pleasure just to chew on them. The beef balls were freshly made, I believe; I saw a lady smooshing some meaty stuff up in a blender. At any rate, my teeth thought they were fresh, and very firm and springy. It was garnished with bean sprouts and celery (have I mentioned how much I love celery?). The soup was hearty and had good body, but some might find it too salty to their liking (sucks to be them). The only thing prohibitive about the whole deal is the price. It’s RM 8.00 for a big bowl and RM 7.00 for a small one – though to be fair, it wasn’t a very small bowl at all.

Now, I’m not a big fan of accompanying Chinese food with chilli condiments of any kind. I think spiciness, unless it’s intentional, overpowers the range of subtle flavours usually evident in good Chinese cooking. But even I have to concede that the hot sauce they accompanied the beef koay teow with was worth a try. It didn’t go overboard with the heat and the sour tang made for an interesting accent (it’s worthy to note that the sauce I’m talking about here is not the same as those they usually serve with chicken rice). I’d also recommend dusting your bowl a little with white pepper if you were ever eating there, but hey, different strokes yeah?

If you squint, you might just make out a fire engine on the far left.

I told the youngish woman who was doing the cooking to hold the innards because cow-shit passes through those and they can never clean those enough for me. They should do something else with cow stomachs, all 4 of them, like make handbags or something. Having them in my mouth gives me the willies.

I haven’t a clue what their business hours are like but they were just prepping up when I passed it about 9:00 am. I returned about 11:00 am business was already beginning to roar. The GPS coordinates according to my Google Earth pin of the place are; 5°24'54.70"N, 100°20'21.62"E.

I don’t know about you but I thought it was totally worth the price I paid. I have two more beef-related noodle places I want to check out on the island – a Hakka-styled beef ball noodle and a beef brisket noodle. We’ll see if they are worth a pen, shall we?



P.S. Apparently, leng teh means herbal tea or liang cha in Hokkien. You learn new things every day, eh?



All beefed up,
k0k s3n w4i