It always is a walk down memory lane when I want to talk about 'wantan mee'.
Do you actually remember what you get in a bowl of wantan mee?
Let me try to recall:
When I bought my first wantan mee, it cost RM1.20
they gave you a 'small mee' (small actually means a handful of noodles just enough to fill a small cup) Then they have 7 to 8 (2mm thick) slices of charsiew (barbequed pork), a spoonful of minced pork, a few strands of chinese mustard, and of course, 5 wantan (dumplings, minced meat wrapped in a flour skin) the size of a 20sen coin.
30 years has gone by. what do you get for RM4.50 a bowl of wantan mee?
Mee, small again, yes. quantity is still the same, except the mee lost all its chewyness.
Charsiew, oh-oh, only 3 to 4 slices, sometimes 5.
No minced pork.
Less strands of vege, maybe due to the new generations not fond of vege, hence the trend.
Wantan, the spotlight of the bowl? (Of course, otherwise, why bother to name it wantan mee). They only give you 3 balls, some stalls only 2. Not only that, the size has shrunk to a 10sen coin. It didn't stop there, the hawker even mastered a way to fold the flour skin back inside the ball, so as to make the wantan look big, BUT with less meat inside. Ingenious, aren't they?
You may say, prices of things have gone up too much that the hawkers are finding it hard to earn a living, so they have to cut corners. Again, I have proven myself to be a little bit different from the usual breed of 'new generation' customers.
I am more willing to plonk down HKD20 for a big bowl of chewy wantan mee with 7 big (as big as a 50sen) wantans, than to look at the miserable two marble-like wantan skin disguised as 'wantans'. And I thought, Hongkong people had a higher cost of living, NO?
Do you actually remember what you get in a bowl of wantan mee?
Let me try to recall:
When I bought my first wantan mee, it cost RM1.20
they gave you a 'small mee' (small actually means a handful of noodles just enough to fill a small cup) Then they have 7 to 8 (2mm thick) slices of charsiew (barbequed pork), a spoonful of minced pork, a few strands of chinese mustard, and of course, 5 wantan (dumplings, minced meat wrapped in a flour skin) the size of a 20sen coin.
30 years has gone by. what do you get for RM4.50 a bowl of wantan mee?
Mee, small again, yes. quantity is still the same, except the mee lost all its chewyness.
Charsiew, oh-oh, only 3 to 4 slices, sometimes 5.
No minced pork.
Less strands of vege, maybe due to the new generations not fond of vege, hence the trend.
Wantan, the spotlight of the bowl? (Of course, otherwise, why bother to name it wantan mee). They only give you 3 balls, some stalls only 2. Not only that, the size has shrunk to a 10sen coin. It didn't stop there, the hawker even mastered a way to fold the flour skin back inside the ball, so as to make the wantan look big, BUT with less meat inside. Ingenious, aren't they?
You may say, prices of things have gone up too much that the hawkers are finding it hard to earn a living, so they have to cut corners. Again, I have proven myself to be a little bit different from the usual breed of 'new generation' customers.
I am more willing to plonk down HKD20 for a big bowl of chewy wantan mee with 7 big (as big as a 50sen) wantans, than to look at the miserable two marble-like wantan skin disguised as 'wantans'. And I thought, Hongkong people had a higher cost of living, NO?
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