Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Ramadhan night food hunting


last saturday night, a bunch of us went out to have our break fast together. it was the first time i broke fast NOT being accompanied by my 4-walls. ok actually it was the second time, because one of the night i broke fast behind the wheels..

so just the mere fact that we were going to do this together got me all pumped up and high. we went to eat at serangoon garden food court, near chomp2, off the north-eastern part of the island.

i like this place because it is easy to find a spot to park my car, and there are plenty of tables to sit on, you don't have to go table-hunting like most food courts. but most important, it has my favourite mee rebus stall.

i never actually liked mee rebus (how do i translate this, boiled mee?) until i ate at this place.




go try and spot the mee lol.. ok the mee was being covered by that thick, sweet gravy that is simply out-of-this-world. who needs drug when you can have this?

and this is the selling stall...





having that big-A-deal mee rebus like that, i don't understand why the stall signboard made satay as the main speciality. because the satay was so non-entity cum forgetable. in fact, i have never tasted satay in this Lion city that is as good as KAJANG satay in malaysian southern-KL small KAJANG city where satay is like what belgium is for waffles. simply divine.

at this pak jaapar stall however, satay is just a mere chunks of meat on sticks.

next destination? to changi village later during the night for supper.

this changi village is famous for its nasi lemak (malay dish coconut milk rice). you'd surely see long line forming in front of the stall at the corner of the food court, as if buying madonna's concert tickets. it's that long.

but if you ask me, i don't think there's anything special about the nasi lemak. i mean, there are lot more better place than this one surely. in KL where i grew up, this nasi lemak would have been very mediocre.

the good thing about changi village is that it is easy to find a spot to park my car, and there are plenty of tables to sit on, you don't have to go table-hunting like most food courts.(by the way, if you noticed, my idea of a good place are : 1) easy to find parking-spot 2) plenty of tables to sit at. none of these,equals to a crappy place).

my favourite stall at changi village is actually selling nasi ayam penyet. ok how should i translate this. squashed chicken rice? sounds gross huh. but assure you, it doesn't taste gross at all.

ok you almost won't be able to find this dish in KL. apparently this nasi ayam penyet diah is originated from surabaya, or so my indonesian friend told me. for me, squashed chicken just sounds like dead chicken being steamrolled on the road by cars.

eeeek.

it's just a rice cooked with chicken soup, eaten with crispy fried (and of course, later squashed) chicken, sweet and spicy chilli gravy, as well as friend tofu and tempe (fermented beans). for me, whether the dish is nice or not depends on the chilly gravy. score on this one, you score all the way home.

in this whole singapore island, i like this stall selling nasi ayam penyet the most. ok i don't remember the stall name, but it's at the same row with that famous nasi lemak stall.

however, when we went there that night, it was close. what a BIG bummer. especially we already craved into our minds we were gonna have nasi ayam penyet that very night. i mean, did we drool for nothing?

luckily we spotted this another stall that boasted, 'famous nasi ayam penyet : the first and the original'.

hmm.. actually it's hard to believe signboards like this. like you can find easily 10 stalls that claim their's are the original one, so which one you wanna believe? it's not like it's trademarked or anything. you can practically put anything up there.

because we have no other choice, we just sit down and ordered. turned out to be a very good nasi ayam penyet! the chilly gravy was almost as divine, although the fried tofu and fermented beans seemed like had missed the last bus. not in sight.






for me, this nasi ayam penyet was better than the famous nasi ayam penyet ria restaurant in orchard lucky plaza. what makes nasi ayam penyet ria special is that it has this crispy fried bits together with the crisply chicken. however, the chilly gravy there not on-par with my favourite. plus, it's expensive at 6 dollars per dish, hard to get parking, and have to pay ERP bla bla bla...

we went back at almost midnight, ending a night long of jalan jalan cari makan on this particular ramadhan night.

the end.



...ed

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