A day or two in Malacca (Melaka)

Spending a day or two in Malacca, a place of rich cultural and deem as the world's heritage city, we had to try all the popular dishes. Malacca, a place of Peranakan origin, is where the Nonya's and Baba's derive from the early Chinese traders that married the local Malays.

(The above pics is a cup of my morning coffee taken with a Calendar in the Hotel Rm) ;p

One of the must-try local dish is Satay Celup. It's steamboat dipping using satay gravy, and a wide range of food selections like cockles, fishball, meatball, abalone mushroom, lady finger, kang kong, preserved eggs, quail eggs, cuttlefish, wanton, 'you tiao', prawns and etc to choose. From our findouts, the black dot in the map below show the long queue & a little more pricey Satay Celup. As it happens to be a Saturday during our visit, we drop the idea of visiting it & shift our focus onto another, situated at Jalan Ong Kim Wee.

See the boxes in the circled zone, that's where we visited, its called Ban Lee Siang if I didn't remember or spelt wrongly. The box on the left was a newly opened one but the business wasn't very good. There is one (box) on the extreme left, which is also quite tasty and at value (hearsay from Melaka local).

Highly recommended by friends for a must-try, here we are for it!

Trays of food placed on the table served with many satay sticks of food. Those sticks with neutral colour cost at $0.50 per stick, and $0.60 for more expensive sticks at red colour. The staffs will keep replenishing the food, other addition ingredients not displayed are kept at the same brand name extended store on the adjacent.

It's definitely worth a try. But due to some hygiene purpose, some people might stay away from it. (The gravy was already there ready for the customer when they arrive.) However, the high heat might have killed any of the bacterias in it. Surely, in some backends of kitchens or street food are worst off?

The gravy will be replenish and stir-mix abt every 10-15 mins by the service staff.

Nights are inevitably shorter when it comes to holiday fun, so we gave no rest to our night arrival, and made our way to the night market on our full stomach of Satay Celup. Its approximately 15 mins walk from Jln Ong Kim Wee. The stretch of night street named Jonker Walk is situated at Jalan Hang Jebat.

From the start of our journey, we had our mouths on Cendol (Chendol). Malacca is famous for its black sugar. We ate at Bibik House Cendol for it was the first Cendol store we came across when we entered the junction (coming from Tan Cheng Lock way).

There was a tub of sweet gula (sugar) syrup serving. It was thick.

Totally inadvisable  to add the sweet syrup as the Cendol itself was quite sweet. The sweet taste had already been pre-added. Overall, the Cendol was quite nice, there's also durian flavour.

RM$2.50 for Cendol, RM$3 for durian.

Along the walk to the long and fancy streets, these are quite the few things that I had eaten:

1) Fruit Sticks

I tried the grape flavour. It was very tasty. The purple grapes were crunchy and sweet (with seeds), and it was twirl-hug with what tasted like honey malt. Yummy!

Was feeling quite filled-up with all the food. Nonetheless, I did not give the kueh-like snacko a miss, as I didn't find this on the streets of Hong Kong, so I never had a chance to savour it. (This is a delight often starred in Hong Kong dramas where lovey-dovey bought when they are out dating at night.)

I had the Pandan flavour. It tasted like kueh, medium soft and tasted of coconuts. But nice! RM$1

Took some photos of food along the way...

Baskets of Siew Mais & Fishballs.

Oyster Pancake.

Geographer cafe - A popular 2-storey place for tourists to drop by for a drink or dance to the music in their casual attire. By the street, saw that there was a funeral parlour in the shophouse too. Very sad to see people mourning, the place is really not ideally situated as people are happily sightseeing just along the boundary of the roadside. The emotions are so huge contrast!

Many buns and bread were on sale too, just that those were fake ones. Still soft to the touch...

The bubble tea stalls had so many different kind of flavours.

Black sugar.

Uncle selling herbal tea by the roadside.

Different kinds of Pau.

I only know of Wife Biscuit, now I got to know of Husband Biscuit too.

Comes the second day, I regret to say I skipped breakfast. Either continental or american. But I found something interesting during my boring explore. At 124 TAMAN MELAKA RAYA. 75000 MELAKA

It will be difficult to predict what I had, as I had never tried this combination before. For a valued price at RM$3.50, this was a sumptuous meal, but not very filling thou'.

I ordered what i saw on the glass panel, but even the staff does not understand my order during my first order attempt. When came the lady boss, she double-confirmed what I wanted, and this made me wondered a little if it was a seldon/rare order from the norm. Whoohoo...I'm so gonna make this dish.

My order: "Dry version" Curry chicken feet mee (curry gravy, not the whole packet but for saucing), using wanton noodle. I told my partner about it, and brought him for his 2nd round, his lunch at this location again.

Trying something different instead of only popular dishes, my motive for holidays :)

Jonker Walk was our destination again for the 2nd day. Upon helpful direction, we make our way to find the popular chicken rice.  Firstly, we reached the trademark point of San Shu Gong, as the chicken rice store is located beside it. The shop of San Shu Gong sells food and drinks as well as local-made food. (This time round we were at the other end of the street of Jonker Walk from the day before.)

There are more than one chicken rice store in red building along Jonker Walk, the other one is 'Gu Cheng' Chicken rice. But this was the one I went.

Part of the interior. The interior looks like an antique house out of swordsmen novel. Tastefully decorated with good feel.

Chicken rice was delicious.

Crossed after to the opposite of the road for the Nonya Cendol.

Cendol coconut milk was nice, and the green cendol tasted a little salty. Quite similar to the taste of what the Indians sell.

Evening when we are back to the shopping centre, Melaka Megamall , next to the Equatorial Hotel, we bought roasted chestnut, just in time to cure my crave of roasted chestnut I mentioned to have the day before.

Usually a pack of roasted chestnut will consist of 50% edibles and 50% non-edibles (not tasty or spoil).

This pack of Tianjin chestnut consist of about 75% edibles.

In Singapore, I loved to purchase roasted chestnut around Bedok North Ave 2 at Blk 511. And, the best roasted chestnut is in Japan, they had 100% edibles in all the packets, and yummy!

Here they sell sweet potatoes too, but its called honey sweet potato.

Before detouring, had dinner in Equatorial Hotel for its Nonya food. The settings were old traditional and the background was playing Malay music. The restaurant on the 3rd floor had won several times of best restaurants awards in Malaysia.

Since we had complimentary voucher for their famous Otah-Otah, we had a plate of 4 for free. Its texture was softer than our usual otah and heavily absorbed with coconut milk.

Out of the followings that we had ordered, we claimed the Sambal Belachan to be the best, followed by the Ayam Pongteh, a sweet black bean sauce stewed with chicken. The rest of the dishes were so-so. But it really depends on personal likings. The dishes weren't very warm too. The total bill came up to abt RM$120 for 4 persons.

Would definitely try other restaurants instead for the next visit. It was a fun short foody trip.

Best regards,