Different from the usual brown sauce-laden KL-style chee cheong fun, Hong Kong-style chee cheong fun is basically fluffy rice noodles rolled with juicy shrimps and chopped char siew, served in a light soy sauce. At the Hong Kong Chee Cheong Fun stall in Restaurant New Lucky, Mrs Gan and her husband work as a dream team: steaming, chopping and plating a serving of Hong Kong-style chee cheong fun in less than two minutes.
According to Mrs Gan, not all rice is equal, which in turn affects the quality of flour produced from it. Understanding the ratio between water and rice flour is essential to making good chee cheong fun. Mrs Gan’s 26 years of experience has taught her well: ladling water-thin batter on to a cloth on the steamer, sprinkling shrimp and char siew over it, removing the now-firm sheet of rice noodle from the cloth to the chopping board with a flick of the wrist, and then expertly pushing and chopping noodles with a metal scraper.
Only three options are available on the menu: shrimp, char siew or yin yong (a mix of both), all priced at RM5 each. The noodles and briny-sweet soy sauce go so well together that the teaspoon-sized daub of fragrant sambal on the side seems almost like an afterthought.