Stand? I wish I'd seen it roll up.
One moment, Mr. Lee and his motorbike weren't there; the next, he'd already parked it and withdrawn a considerable display from his compact cart. (He seems to pull it with a hitch rather than couple it as a sidecar, despite the setup while he's doing business.)
Likewise, I didn't manage a photo of his most elaborate packaging job, for a Malaysian take on the steamed-rice cake called chwee kueh (rm 0.90). My order, before and after unwrapping, is shown below, but for a later customer he provided a little something extra. With three gentle folds from the corner, in the same wax paper that cradled the oily chwee kueh he also secured accompaniments of mustard and chili sauce. He then snugged the wax paper around the kueh, folded that bundle in newspaper, rubber-banded it, and added a wooden skewer, the customary utensil. All told, Mr. Lee needed little more time to wrap that chwee kueh than you likely needed to read about it.
Also shown: a few of Mr. Lee's sweet kueh, his stock in trade. I had four: a golden slab, perhaps tapioca-based; a blue-and-white pulut tai-tai, with a slather of kaya on the side; a glutinous rice onde-onde, rolled in grated coconut, with a hidden center of semi-liquid gula melaka (palm sugar); and, in close-up, a sweet potato kueh with a caramelized gula melaka top. Total cost: rm 3 (about 85 cents at the time). "So cheap," said another customer, very self-satisfied with the good price he'd managed for a much larger haul. I believe he was carrying his booty back to Singapore.
Mr. Lee's kueh stand
Outside Kedai Makanan Nam Chun, Lorong Ara Kiri 2, Lucky Garden, Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur
Midafternoon to early evening
(From a summer 2010 visit)
