$5 for a plate of string hoppers? I used to pay - wait for it - £7 (almost RM50!) for a single utthapam when I was back in London, and it was nowhere near as good as the ones I enjoyed at a tatty hole-in-the-wall place in Cheras for less than RM2 ... but somehow still worth it.
My funniest food moment came one day at Heathrow when I was on my way back to visit my family in England. I got stopped by a beturbaned Sikh customs officer who wanted to search my luggage.
Out came all these little plastic bags containing dried leaves and powders and some stinky resinous stuff which he held at arms length suspiciously.
They're my spices, I pleaded. I need to cook my Malaysian food ...
It was such a funny piece of brown/white/asian/British role reversal!
The picture below is Romesh Gunaskera's drawing String Hoppers which I purloined from the South Asia Diaspora Literature and Arts Archive from which I stole pictures of his drafts some time back.
I'm feeling hungry now!
2 comments:
You'd think a Sikh would understand. They cook with pretty pungent spices too :)
Nice to see the poem stirred up memories of your own, Sharon. :)
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