San Peng Chicken Rice & Hor Fun @ Pudu, Kuala Lumpur

Buddy Jeffrey suggested I try the gai shi hor fun 鸡丝河粉 at Pudu LRT station, so here we are 😊

It's a street side makeshift set up, with folding tables and stackable plastic chairs under droopy, flappy plastic canvas over the walkway, along Jalan San Peng. When travelling, I seek out disappearing hyperlocal food experiences like this.

The words on the glass only say what the stall sells - chicken rice, chicken and prawn hor fun, braised pork belly, intestine, egg, tofu, chicken feet and preserved vegetable. I didn't see any stall name but on Google map it is San Peng Chicken Rice & Hor Fun.

This stall is actually Guang Ji 广记. I missed the signboard when I was there 😂

Put in our orders, sit back, and enjoy the view while waiting for our gai shi hor fun. Yeah, in KL and Malaysia generally, they provide table service, even at street side stalls.

It's such a beautiful morning 😊

A simple breakfast to start our day.

Hor fun (rice noodles) in a red brown soup with glistening prawn oil and topped with shredded chicken, prawn, scallion and fried shallot. The fried shallots were freshly home fried, so extra points from me straightaway 😁 🤭

First thing first, the prawn head & shell soup. There might be some chicken stock involved, I did not verify. Well balanced crustacean umami, savoury, sweet with slight spicy heat.

The slurpy tender medium width rice noodles picked up the soup and its flavours well.

The chicken shreds pulled from a poached bird were tender and had a slight chicky sweetness. The prawn slices adding their prawn sweetness were nice too.

We were given cut red chili for our gai shi hor fun, which worked well to boost the spiciness of the soup. I forgot to ask, if they have sambal to go with it (like they do in Ipoh, where this dish came from).

Accordingly to one theory, gai shi hor fun is Cantonese Ipoh's answer to Penang Hokkien mee. As Cantonese are more chicken than prawn eaters, when Penang hawkers moved to Ipoh, they added pulled poached chicken to Penang Hokkien mee. The Cantonese also switched yellow noodles to rice noodles. Took away the kang kong. Sounds plausible through we have no documents to prove this.

So dishes adapt and take on local characteristics as they travel.

In Ipoh, my fav gai shi hor fun is at Moon de Moon but I haven't back there since 2018.