Over the sea…

For the uniinitiated, Malaysia is divided into two parts, West Malaysia in the mainland peninsula and Sabah and Sarawak in East Malaysia across the South China Sea.

There are differences between the cuisines of the races and dialects in different parts of one state even, what more to say throughout the whole country. Some of the Iban dishes, for instance, come across quite differently from the Bidayuh ones and of course, those of the Foochows in Sibu are very different from the ones in Sitiawan Perak or Yong Peng, Johore.

Lately, there are a couple of places claiming that they serve West Malaysian Malay food and when I saw one that said it would be selling lontong (even though, if I am not wrong, it is an Indonesian dish), I simply could not wait to go and try.

Ever since my girl changed schools, I never drove past this place anymore – and I never got to eat the lontong there! As a matter of fact, I am not sure if it is still open for business or not. So far, the only lontong I have had would be the ones from the roadside stalls – I may stumble upon it at Ramadan if I am lucky! There was a good one here but that place had closed down already long ago.

So there we were, for lunch that day and of course, I wasted no time in helping myself to the lontong (RM6.00)…

I took a lot of the nasi impit/himpit (pressed rice, something like ketupat) and drowned it with the soup and all the added ingredients, mostly cabbage, long beans, carrot, bits of tauhu kee and tang hoon. It was all right, that much I would say, a bit watered down. I wouldn’t mind it if it were a bit more lemak and less salty and no, it was not so nice that you would see me rushing back there for more.

I probably would want to drop by again to give the nasi lemak a try though. I thought the smell was quite nice but I did not get to try it that day.

My girl and the mum had their nasi campur (mixed rice) and they sure had a lot of dishes that one can pick and choose, many of them fish…

…and I was thinking that this would be a good place for us to drop by on our no-meat Fridays.

I was drooling over the balitongs (siput sedut)…

– I haven’t had those for a very long time now and I sure would not want to start in case it may trigger off some allergy in me and I’d end up scratching all night long.

There were a lot of vegetable dishes too like this nangka muda masak lemak (young jackfruit cooked in santan/coconut milk)…

…and I love the Malays’ pickled cucumber…

…that they often give you by the side of whatever dish you order.

Of course, there were the meat dishes…

…as well.

Both my girl and the mum took the salai daging masak lemak (smoked beef cooked with santan/coconut milk)…

…and they enjoyed it very much and I thought this was ayam masak merah…

…that my girl had but she said it wasn’t. She did think it was very nice though.

My missus had the sambal udang (prawns)…

– they probably ran out of petai (stink beans) and the aforementioned nangka muda (young jackfruit)…

…which she did not really enjoy. She complained that it was very salty!

Both the ladies helped themselves to the noodles (there was fried kway teow too)…

…instead of rice. I thought that was a strange combination. If I were to go for all those dishes, I would definitely want rice to go with whatever I pick.

For my dessert, I had this slice of pumpkin pie (RM6.00)…

…which I thought was very nice.

The total for our lunch that day came up to only RM37.00 altogether for the three of us, inclusive of drinks. I did get to speak to the lady running the place – she’s local, from Kampung Nangka but the employees cooking in the kitchen are all West Malaysian, she said. Needless to say, we would want to come back again and try some of the other dishes in their VERY long buffet spread.

WALIY CORNER (2.314206, 111.826090)…

…is located among the shops behind Bandong Walk, along Jalan Bandong.