Stay longer…

Well, I sure am glad that the nasi lemak guy is still around. Hopefully, he will stay a whole lot longer this time and will not disappear again. There were two days when the stall was not open and I did ask him why once and he said there was a large order for some kuehs that they were making at home so they did not have time to prepare the stuff he would need at his stall.

I noticed that he has a nice new sign at his stall now…

…but he is still using his previous menu…

*Archive photo*

…though already weathered and faded. It looks like his stall is also open for business in the evening as well, from 4.00 p.m. until 6.30 p.m. for those of you who can’t drag yourselves out of your beds till the sun is already halfway across the sky.

Actually, I did tell him that he should just increase his prices as he sees fit. After all, everything is getting more and more expensive – grated coconut for squeezing santan (coconut milk) was RM4.00 a kg before Ramadan, RM5.00 during the fasting month and the Raya and now it is RM6.00 a kg. The most important thing, I told him,  is that he should never scrimp on the ingredients and compromise on the taste of what he sells. If we want cheap, we can just go and buy those RM1.50 packets wrapped in brown paper at all the Malay kueh stalls in town (they used to be RM1.00 each sometime ago) while those who are looking out for quality, value for money, would not mind paying a little bit more.  I guess at this point in time, he does not see the need to so he is still maintaining those same prices.

I did buy the regular sometime last week as it so happened that he did not have any chicken that morning, 8 packets altogether for my friends to try. Needless to say, this time around when I dropped by a couple of days ago, I wanted the one with the chicken and I was delighted that he was having ayam masak merah…

…for a change. I certainly would prefer that to the usual plain fried chicken.

Yes, the rice was as lemak (rich in santan/coconut milk) as ever and there were the usual condiments…

Wait a minute! What happened to the peanuts? He must have forgotten to include those – I certainly would ask him the next time I drop by his stall.

The one with chicken is just RM1.50 more…

…which is pretty reasonable, considering that they are selling it at RM2.00 a piece, never mind whether it is drumstick, wing or any other part of the chicken, at my favourite Malay food stall a short distance down the road that opens around 10.00 a.m till past lunchtime on weekdays.

I did ask him if his business had picked up since I blogged about it and he said yes and thanked me for it. He also added that there were some former customers from years and years ago and they all came back after reading about it in my blog. Hopefully, he will do well enough to keep him going and make him stick around…

This NASI LEMAK STALL NO. 17 (2.313869, 111.825808) is located at Bandong Walk, Jalan Bandong a few stalls away from the roti canai stall, somewhere in front of this shop in the block where the 1Malaysia clinic is.