Johor Bahru Malaysia has numerous public hawker centres, each with its own character. Taman Tasek Hawker Centre set under huge leafy trees and surrounded by fruit trees may be among the smallest, yet it is well loved by its immediate community and visitors from out of town Malaysia and Singapore.
Taman Tasek Hawker Centre have just four hawker stalls - all are seen in this picture. There are two Malay stalls and two Chinese stalls. Hawker centres in Malaysia reflect the multicultural community of the country.
Community fruit trees around Taman Tasek Hawker Centre give the community eating place a sense of community ownership.
The lush greens around the hawker centre give the place a nice rustic kampung feel and keep the place cool in Malaysia's tropical heat.
The stalls at Taman Tasek Hawker Centre open at 7am and close after 1pm. Many office workers come here for their breakfast before going to work downtown (10 minutes drive away). Many people living nearby come here in groups after their daily morning exercise.
Day trippers from Singapore come here for the popular kway teow kia stall (which serves one of the best renditions of the traditional Teochew staple in JB). Many have been doing so for over 20 years. You will often bump into former Taman Tasek residents who come back regularly to reconnect with old friends and the stall holders here.
This is the Taman Tasek Kway Teow Kia stall in the 1980s before the hawker centre was built. When MBJB, the Johor Bahru City Council built Taman Tasek Hawker Centre in the 1990s, four mobile food stalls operating nearby were moved into the centre.
It's a simple roof over the heads of the food stalls. No frills, just shelter from the rain, piped water, electricity, public toilets - that's all. But, that's enough to facilitate an organic thriving community hub for affordable tasty meals and community "club" of sorts.
The hawkers are charged nominal rent by the City Council. Monthly stall rental today (2018) is about RM300. The idea is to provide viable career options and affordable meals for the people (with minimal state intervention).
Another benefit of the nominal rental is the preservation of traditional heritage food and craftsmanship. With nominal rental, the stall holders are under less pressure to be more "efficient", to scale up production in order to meet costs.
Making traditional heritage food the old way is very inefficient and "unproductive". Like any art form, preparing authentic heritage food cannot be rushed or mechanised without compromising its authenticity. If operating costs are high, "less productive" artisanal hawkers who prepare and cook their own food will be edged out by generic mass produced food vendors (and eventually, even just vending machines 😱 ). Authentic heritage food will not survive in this market place.
Making traditional heritage food requires a lot of manual work and human touch. Changing the way of preparing the dish like using synthetic ingredients and mechanised production basically changes the dish - the end product may look like the real thing in superficial aspects but it is different in taste, mouthfeel, smell and spirit because it is simply something else other than heritage food.
Fortunately, Taman Tasek Hawker Centre hawkers still hold steadfastly to the old ways of preparing traditional heritage hawker dishes.
Let's take a walk through Taman Tasek Hawker Centre.
Starting from the left when you walk into the hawker centre is Selera Melaka. It's a Halal food stall serving roti canai, mee goreng, mee siam, mee rebus, ayam goreng etc for breakfast. For lunch, Selera Melaka serves nasi campur, asam pedas, nasi lemak, kari ayam, etc. All familiar local staples.
Stalls run by MBJB have the City Council crest prominently displayed on its signboard.
Selera Melaka hand make their own dough for their roti canai. It is more "productive" to buy mass produced dough from central kitchens (i.e. food factories) but not at Selera Melaka.
Nasi Lemak Taloon stall - they are like a nasi campur stall now besides serving nasi lemak (coconut rice) and ayam goreng (fried chicken). They still cook their food the "unproductive" way with a small charcoal stove.
Nasi Lemak Taloon's fans come here for the warmth of Malay homestyle cooking.
To the right of Nasi Lemak Taloon is a chap fan 杂饭 (or economic rice) stall known as 樹下美食 Delicacies under the Tree. It is the Chinese equivalent of the Malay nasi campur (mixed rice) which consists of Chinese homestyle staple dishes that go with boiled white rice. 樹下美食 also serves fried bee hoon and mee hoon kueh.
To the right of 樹下美食 is 南濱園粿條仔 Taman Tasek Kway Teow Kia which is probably the best known hawker stall in this hawker centre.
The Lee family ran Taman Tasek Kway Teow Kia since 1981.
Kway teow kia is an iconic Teochew dish of Johor Bahru, Malaysia. It is rarely found outside of Johor Bahru. It originated from leaner times when every part of the pig is eaten. The dish traditionally consists of pork offal, head (snout and ears), skin, belly etc braised in mild herbal stock. These are side dishes eaten with slender ribbon rice noodles known as 粿條仔 kway teow kia, hence the name of the dish.
The Lees do their kway teow kia the totally inefficient way - they braise their pork offal and parts separately i.e. large intestines in their own stew pot, pig skin in another stew pot, pork belly in yet another and so on, and so on. This is far more inefficient than hawkers who braise everything in one large pot 一鍋熟. The difference is the Lees' braised pig parts all have their characteristic tastes rather than everything tastes more or less the same.
It takes a lot of commitment and dedication to prepare and cook traditional heritage dishes in the truest way instead of taking shortcuts and cost cuts. No wonder Taman Tasek Kway Teow Kia keeps winning new fans and multi-generation old fans keep coming back year after year. Taman Tasek Kway Teow Kia stall is a dating hot spot of many couples and many return regularly with their children.
👉 Drop by JB's Taman Tasek Hawker Centre to experience Malaysian hawker culture and taste some traditional heritage food. Taman Tasek Hawker Centre hasn't changed much because heritage is timeless and need not be trendy to be cool.
Taman Tasek Hawker Centre
Address: Intersection of Jalan Lembah and Jalan Tasek, Taman Tasek, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
GPS: 1°29'08.5"N 103°43'21.2"E 🌐 1.485680, 103.722567
Waze: 南濱園粿條仔 (type Taman Tasek Kway Teow Kia)
Hours: 7:00am - 1:00pm (stalls close on different days)
👆 Click to go to JB Best 100 Hawkers page
Schumakay Goh said on Johor Kaki Facebook: "Bring back the memory Tony..... I used to stay there. Do you know there was a Zhi Cha stall operated at night time same location around 20 yrs ago? The boss use very wide width kueh tiao, the real sha hor fun , and was the only stall I ever tasted in Jb."
ReplyDeleteKen Neoh said on Johor Kaki Facebook: "I live here now, raising my 2 kids in this peaceful and serene community. This is the place that I choose and bought my landed property upon coming back from overseas, after living more than 10 years away from Malaysia. Truly a good and nice community, and as well nice food stall with authentic taste being maintained through the years."
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