Aku hanya pendatang…

She says she’s from Kuala Lumpur…and if I don’t see her stall open for business anymore, it would mean that she has moved back already…

But presently, this very nice lady is running a nasi lemak kukus stall outside her house at Rejang Park here right across the road from the closed-down cinema (GPS estimate: 2.306222,111.836856).

She is selling her nasi lemak at RM2.00 a packet and at RM4.50 for the special. I’m not too sure but I think if you go for the special, you get a choice on one…or maybe two of the three options – curry, masak merah or masak hitam…

Now, why am I not sure? Well, I asked her whether I would get one of the three if I buy the special, and she told me that I could have two…and when I told her that I could not make up my mind as to which two I wanted, she said that she would give me all three. LOL!!! That was why in the end, I got a whole lot of everything for RM4.50…

Now, my trouble began! There were all kinds of tastes in that packet, so much so that the original nasi lemak taste was overshadowed – completely drowned out. Thus, if you ask me whether it was any good, I really do not know. I could see that there was the usual rice and some peanuts and a salted fish plus a quarter hardboiled egg…and she gave me a generous helping of the sambal…

…and also some fried curry-flavoured cabbage.

As for the extras, the curry was so-so; I think we cook much nicer curry at home (and that’s why I never buy curry from my regular Bandong Malay food stall or anywhere else for that matter)…and her masak merah was different from the usual – it was nice but other than the colour, I don’t think it was masak merah as everyone would know it. The masak hitam was good though…

…so if you only have one choice, then this would be your best bet. In fact, I would think that if you have two choices, you might as well ask for a double helping of this instead of asking for one of the other two – it was that good!

On the whole, I enjoyed it a lot even though it did not feel that I was eating nasi lemak at all. I guess some things should be kept simple and as close to its original state as far as possible instead of adulterating it with this and that, so much so that one loses sight of what that thing is actually like. Perhaps I should go back one of these days and get the RM2.00 packet so that I can taste the real thing and tell everyone whether it is any good or not.

For one thing, I do wish the nice lady would not punctuate every sentence with “uncle” – considering the fact that she’s no spring chicken herself, it  only served to make me feel a really ancient relic. LOL!!!