Noodle soup, no noodles.

On our previous visits to our favorite little Muslim Food stall for lunch, we had noticed one of the younger girls manning a giant caldron of bubbling soup.



Today we want to try this bubbling soup. We've ordered one kuay tiaw nam neur, a beef noodle soup that arrives with 3 massive beef balls and some fall-apart tender braised beef all sitting on some thin rice noodles and beansprouts in a rich, dark broth. There's a generous scatter of roasted peanuts and chopped coriander to top it off. The beef balls were delicious, a little squeak as you bit through a delicious, meaty ball. The braised beef, sublime. A little chilli vinegar and dried chilli flakes were added to the broth.



We had noticed these oval shaped bowls going out to every table, and overheard 'Gao Lao'. We weren't really sure what it was, but it looked and smelt great, so this was the next dish of the day. When we ordered it, the young girl smiled, then asked 'gai or nuer'? We choose the gai (chicken). Ah, then we work out, it's the same noodle soup just no noodles. There's some braised little chicken wing drumettes sitting in the same rich, dark broth with some bean sprouts, coriander and a boiled egg. It was very tasty.



We still had a little room though, maybe because we didn't eat those extra noodles. We had spotted the roti pan so decide an roti nam kaeng, roti with beef curry, will do just fine. The soup lady yells something in Thai, and what looks to definitely be the grandmother, emerges from the kitchen and starts up the burner. She takes the little ball of roti dough and rolls it out as if she's done, oh, let's say about 6 million of these in her life. A little oil on the pan and on goes the dough. She cracks an egg into the middle and lets it bubble away for a moment. It's then folded in half, a dollop of butter and it's flipped over. It's cut into little bite sized pieces, and served with a dish of scrumptious beef curry liquid on the side for dipping.



As we're sitting there eating our roti, we're looking around at the staff. This little roadside stall has the young (maybe late 20's) girl on the soup pot, her mum to look after the woks and then grandma does the roti. There's also a very young girl, maybe 10, who appears to be the daughter of the soup girl, and also the one to jump on the scooter and scoot down the street if they need aditional ingredients. Wow, amazing, that means 4 generations working and cooking at this little street side Muslim food shack.


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