When I was a kid, I remember that my parents use to take me to Ampang for Yong Tau Foo. Bearin mind in the 70s the journey from PJ to Ampang was not short trip like now. Situated north of KL and with small truck roads, a journey there can sometime take up to an hour. Back then I use to remember having yong tau foo in a small flimsy looking shack. As for the food well if you are so far away and you make an effort to go there, it must be good right?
Coming back to the present, I think this franchising (or some other form of it) thing had gone a bit too far as far as traditional food is concern. I guess everyone is jumping into the band wagon to make money (eg. like the sudden mushrooming of Kopitiam in recent years). Well without central control over the quality and taste of the food, one shouldn't expect too much from these branches that serve "fastfood" now. The mass production of yong tau foo and generic taste of it had made this Ampang yong tau foo had degraded the very point of traditional fares such as these, not to mention that the yong tau foo taste the same from one branch to another.
Another point to ponder is the lost of the finer touches that the original proprieter had which he directly knew the feedback from the customers. I guess like everything else in this country, it will mushroom initially and when reality bites over time only the strong will survive.
1 comment:
You said it there Kean Shiung. Mamak joints, Kopitiam's and Ipoh White Coffee franchises have reduced these once icons of Malaysian food to mere fastfood chains. The taste is bland with nothing special that instigate people to drive hours on trunk roads just to get a taste.
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