MENTION Teluk Intan and the town’s century-old Leaning Tower tends to come to mind. However, the peaceful and quiet town is known not only for the tower that looks very much like the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy.
A day out to the town, still known by many locals as Teluk Anson, can be an adventurous trip for food lovers, too.
Apart from getting a taste of the popular cuisine sold here, a “food-finding” trip can also be a history lesson of sorts.
This is because many of the popular foods sold in the town have a long history with recipes passed down from generation to generation.
One example is the delicious Liew Kee chee cheong fun, where the family business is almost like an institution.
Ask anyone from Teluk Intan and they will point you to the house at Jalan Hill where the popular dish is made and sold as takeaways.
The dish comes in two types – turnip and dried shrimp – and is eaten with sliced pickled green chillies to enhance its flavour.
Sow Ah Lek, 54, runs the trade with the help of his wife Khor Seu Eng, 51, and a few workers.
According to Ah Lek, his late grandfather Sow Liew, from China, started the business in Teluk Intan more than 70 years ago.
The family stall started on the riverbank in Teluk Intan and they later moved to the current premises when floods and erosion affected them in the 1970s.
Rice flour and water, with a bit of salt, are the main ingredients for the chee cheong fun.
Either turnip or dried shrimp are added to the watery mixture before Sow feeds it into a huge custom-made machine that steams and makes trays of chee cheong fun.
On weekends, it is common to see people queuing at the front of the house, which opens for business from 6.30pm to 7am from Tuesdays to Fridays and from 6.30pm on Saturdays to 8.30am on Sundays.
Ah Lek’s chee cheong fun is also sold at a food stall in the mornings at Jalan Maharani.
Two other stalls popular among residents of Teluk Intan are the Mastan Ghani coffee shop, which sells mee rebus and rojak, and the M. Gulam Rasul nasi kandar place that serves ayam goreng rempah (fried chicken with spices).
According to Mohd Sultan, who took over the mee rebus and rojak stall from his father Mastan Ghani, his late father began selling the dishes in 1948 after he arrived from India.
“My late father created his own kuah (gravy) for the mee rebus and rojak which he sold by moving around the town with the dishes hanging from a piece of wood supported on his shoulders,” he said.
“After a while, he sold the popular mee rebus and rojak in a warong (makeshift stall) at a street corner.”
Mohd Sultan, 63, said the local authority provided a stall at Jalan Selat in 1959 and he had been there ever since.
