A lok lok legend for the past 40 years

GEORGE TOWN, Oct 29 — It all started when Phang Han Seong was working at a lok lok stall in Padang Brown almost 50 years ago.

He used to help skewer fish balls, vegetables, clams, jellyfish, pork liver, meat balls, shrimps and squid as the hawker’s assistant.

Then he would arrange the skewers on plates and prepare the hot pots and accompanying sauces for customers.

“I started working in my teens and when I saved enough, I set up my own small stall,” Phang, 63, said.

He opened his very own lok lok stall at a hawker site along Gottlieb Road in the late 1970s.

The road, in front of the Penang Chinese Girl’s High School, used to have a row of hawker stalls selling everything from char koay teow to laksa.

Phang’s lok lok stall became such a hit that all the customers from the Padang Brown lok lok stall came over here instead.

“Right from the beginning, I mix and grind my own sauces and now I have more than eight different types such as sweet chilli, garlic chilli, sweet sauce, Thai green chilli sauce, sweet and sour sauce, satay peanut sauce, tomyam and a few others,” he said.

The secret to a really good lok lok is not in the skewers of food on offer as these are common fare that can be found anywhere.

Phang said the sauces are very important; they make or break a lok lok stall.

“My ingredients have to be fresh and on top of that, my sauces are all homemade and freshly cooked so this combination keeps people coming back for more,” he said.

He makes sure each of his sauces are different and have all the flavours of sweet, sour, savoury and spicy.

Phang’s stall has more than 30 different types of skewered food from seafood to meat to vegetables.

His stall was relocated to the Pulau Tikus Market hawker site in 1992 and he has been operating there since.

It is easily recognisable as there will be several tables with hot pots in the centre and skewered food arranged on plates and stacked all around the hot pots. The sauces, in small metal containers, will also be arranged in a row on each table.

Phang himself is an icon of sorts as he counts the sticks in a sing song manner in Hokkien when tallying up the bill.

Prices are depicted by the colour at the end of the sticks; they range from 50 sen up to RM2.

Lok Lok Stall

Pulau Tikus Market complex, Jalan Pasar

Time: 7pm-11pm

Closed on Wednesdays

from Malay Mail Online | Eat/Drink http://ift.tt/2loLO7N
Source: The Malay Mail