This stall, among other things, sold chickens feet (it was her speciality and people came from all over Melaka to buy them) and brilliant noodle soups. The lady who owned the stall (the lady in the second picture with the purple top and red apron tiers) was definately a formidable character. She never opened her stall at 5pm like all the other hawker stalls but instead turned up at 9pm. One of her family - a wee old man as old as the hills - turned up at about 8pm to set up the stall. By the time she got there at 9pm there was already a large queue waiting for take-away as well as many people sitting at the tables waiting for her to open, despite all the other stalls being open for business. From 9pm to 1am she never stopped. She ran between cooking and serving tables. Despite the amount of orders she must have been dealing with at any one time, between her and her other workers, no orders were ever written down. I really don't know how she kept track of them.
Chriostophe had told us that her won ton noodle soup was excellent but did warn us that the lady could be a bit 'shouty and bad tempered'. A bit of shouting never bothered us so off we went one evening to try the won ton noodle soup. Noodle in Malay is 'mee' and you could order it plain or with curry. When we went over to the hawker stalls the place was packed and we were lucky to get seats. All the stalls were busy but the noddle lady's stall was heaving. We grabbed two spare seats at at table, where a Malay family were sitting (no chance of getting a table to yourself when hawker stalls are busy). Noodle lady was running around mental, shouting and bawling and was really quite scarey. Me and Colin just looked at one another saying 'you go and order, no you go'. Colin's hunger got the better of him and off he went to order. He bravely stopped noodle lady in mid-stride and placed an order. When he came back to the table I asked him how it went. He shrugged and said 'I'm not sure, I don't know if I've ordered or not. I asked her for one won ton mee and one won ton curry mee (in his best Glasweigan accent of course) and she just glared at me and walked away. We'll just sit here for a bit and see what happens'.
After sitting for quite some time and watching people who came in after us, leaving with a full stomach, we knew we hadn't ordered. So, with a bit of a prod, off Colin went again for a second go. This time he got one of noodle woman's staff and placed the order with her. At last the food came and it was worth the wait.
We had a second attempt at eating from her stall. As we had now been seen in there on other occasions when eating from the other stalls, noodle lady's worker greeted us with a smile when we placed our order. She noted that we had been there often but we hadn't tried the special - chickens feet. I don't know what possessed me to tell her I would think about it and let her know when the soups arrived (Colin and I have both been given chickens feet before, usually in peoples homes, and have managed to dispose of them discreetly without offending the host). Maybe because these feet were bubbling away in a big stew I thought this was somehow going to be OK. Colin couldn't believe it as I never order anything like that, unlike him. Just then I glanced over at a young Malay couple at the table next to us. The guy put his chopsticks into his bowl and pulled out 3 chicken's feet. As he was raising the chopsticks from the bowl to his mouth, the feet looked all goey and the toes were wobbling around. He then popped the whole 3 feet into his chops, chewed like mad for a minute or two and then spat out what I suppose was bits of bone and gristle - although if he spat out bone and gristle what did he actually eat of the feet. Needles to say when the girl came back with our noodle soup I declined the offer of the special saying maybe next time.
After that, if we wanted to eat at noodle lady's we just tended to get a take-away and take it over to the guest house, not because I would have to face the chicken's feet, but because the shouty noodle lady gave you a headache. In fact in the pictures above Colin is the guy dressed in black waiting for his take-away while I am taking a picture of him from our room window just across the road.
There were many other stalls under that same roof. Among them was the frog porridge lady, and that was all she sold. I have left Malaysia never knowing what frog porridge is and I will never regret not knowing. There was the popiah man. Popiah are Nyonya cooked spring rolls that can be served deep fried or not. They are much tastier than spring rolls as we know them. There was a guy whose stall was fronted by a big glass cage filled with frogs jumping all around the place. When someone ordered from him, in went the hand and out came a fighting frog. Being ashamedly partial to frog's legs I asked Lee Sun how the frog was cooked and how you went about ordering it. She advised me that there was no such delicacy as frog's legs but that the whole frog was boiled and the whole frog was eaten. Another stall we gave a body swerve to. There was also the stir-fry lady. Her food was excellent but unfortunately we only managed to eat there once at the end of our stay as, up until that point, we couldn't figure out how to get across to her what we wanted to order as her food wasn't on display and she never had any pictures displayed showing her completed plates of food.!
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