omnivore's dilemma

So much food, so little time! What to eat?!

Melaka besides having a lot of history, has also been an incredible eating experience. The local food is delicious and incredibly inexpensive. In no particular order, below are some of the local delicacies we've sampled!

"Cheung Fun"

Rice sheets filled with shrimp and bbq pork, all steamed and covered in soy sauce and sesame seeds. Rice sheet and filling all made fresh! While looking for the Portuguese settlement/seafood restaurants last night we stumbled upon this outdoor night food court, that had probably 25 - 30 stalls (think hot dog vendor-type stalls) with awesome local food! we were there while one guy was setting up his makeshift stall - fold out table, huge wok filled with a few liters of oil and a kerosene tank. haha

Rice balls

The middle dish is actually the one of interest. This is apparently local fare. We couldn't figure out exactly how they're made...but the rice is cooked in chicken stock...probably chicken fat and then rolled into balls. Above we ate them with some vegetables and duck. (sorry michelle - mrs.blunder - i know your take on duck...just pretend it's chicken!)

Rojak and Homemade soup noodles

Rojak, which we bought in Little India is described in some books as a salad...the one above was a mix of fried tofu, fried bread, cucumbers, a hard boiled egg and other vegetarian things...possibly seitan? and covered in a sweet sort of soy sauce based mixture. Ari also had this in the cameron highlands where it had more of a spicy kick.

The soup noodles were freshly made in front of us. Noodles rolled out and put directly in the chicken broth to cook. Then they add vegetables and fish balls (rolled up fish not the anatomy) and top it off with dried fried fish and garlic.

Crab...shells

So unfortunately, this dinner didn't last long enough for a photo. We walked about an hour and a half to find this elusive area called "Kampong Portugis" (portuguese settlement, where the area is largely inhabited by portuguese descendants) where they have seafood stalls. We finally made it there and had two black pepper crabs (very different to what we had in singapore - crab was cooked with black pepper not covered in black pepper sauce) and a side of fried seafood noodles.

"Cendol"

Last but not least dessert. This is similar to "sam sik bing" (three coloured ice) and is basically shaved ice with red beans and green jelly pieces, in coconut milk doused with the local sugar (that has a sort of coffee flavour) .

We also had some traditional Nonya food but again it didn't last long enough for a photo...

Melaka's portuguese-dutch-british-chinese-malay history has definitely made for some good eats!