Road trip: Melaka

We had one thing, and one thing only on our minds: FOOD!

A bunch of us had decided to take a weekend road trip over to Melaka recently. We stayed with our friend,W, there so there won't be any hotel review in this post.

All we did was pack our bags and drive over and let W take us wherever she thought we would like.

As with any other trip to just about anywhere with friends other than Gina, we started out late! We were to leave at about 11am to get to Melaka just in time for lunch. But well, at 11.30am, K still hadn't arrived - he'd only just picked up the first of the three of us.

It was no surprise that the moment we left my place, K asked if we were hungry and shall we have lunch? So we picked G up and went for some pretty good noodles soup with fish. The foodie trip has started even before we left!

Right after that we leave for Melaka and it's heavy traffic all the way. By the time we met up with W, it was already around 3pm. After we dropped off our luggage at her place, our next stop as for pork satay! On the way there, she warned us that it wouldn't be the regular peanut satay sauce. Instead, it would be some kind of pineapple sauce. Her hesitation got me a little worried that I might not like it. But, damn, I'm craving for it again as I write this! The pork was tender and juicy - even softer than regular chicken satay. And the sauce that I'd worried about before? Well turns out it's oh only AWESOME!

It's just this shop in a row of shop houses not too far away from Jonker Street. I have no idea what the name of this shop is but according to the GPS coordinates I saved, it is not Sun May Hion, which is the first address I got when I Googled pork satay in Melaka. It does, however, appear to be only about a block away from the aforementioned other shop.

A little not here...it might not be a very good idea to take my word for it when it comes to directions, eh?

Anyways, back to the food. It's one of those places where they get you started off with, well exactly what's in the picture. A plate of satay, a big pot of the sauce which you can dish into individual dishes (there were 5 of us), some cucumber and ketupat. They then replenish you're plate as you finish. After several times, and they notice you're slowing down, they'll ask if you would like some more, and will stop once you've had enough. You'll be charged according to how many sticks you've had.

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Next up, Cendol and Laksa!

The next stop is this super popular, touristy place called Jonker 88, that had people queuing out onto the street. There are two stalls at this place: cendol on the left, and laksa on the right. I honestly wasn't that keen on cendol - I don't take it even though I come from another part of the country abundant with this stuff! But I must say for one who has a pretty cool relationship with cendol, I really liked it! Using gula Melaka made all the difference! We had three kinds of cendol: the regular kind, durian cendol, and some third one with a non-explanatory name like three treasures or something like that.

That little dish in the picture would be the sago gula Melaka. Now this was delicious. Strangely, none of my friends seem to have known about this dish before I ordered it. Is it really that unheard of?

We also order a bowl of asam laksa and curry laksa to share. And my review for these would be...meh..I've had better. The curry laksa wasn't too bad. But the asam laksa was just bland...more forgettable than any old asam laksa you get just about anywhere in the awesome island way up North.

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More desserts.

After we walked around the area a bit, our next stop was Dataran Pahlawan for this layer cake/crepe thing at Nadeje. I see people raving about this place all over the internet, and 4 of the 5 of us saying what a lot of people say online too: "OMG why don't they open a branch in KL?"

Needless to say, I was the one who didn't say that. If they did, the novelty, which I'm guessing is pretty much the main attraction of the place, would be lost.

We had three flavours: rum and raisin, cheese, and praline or something to that effect. My favourite was the cheese as it was the least bland! I didn't really dislike anything there but it was, in my book, pretty forgettable.

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By the time we were done with the cakes, we were absolutely stuffed. It was time to take a little break. The boys went for a massage while the rest of us went home to chill for a bit. We were all supposed to go, but honestly the idea of lying face down with someone pressing down on your back brings to my over active imagination images of me puking. Which kind of made me want to. Okay no elaborating on that in a post about food!

Anyways next up was dinner and we were off to Nyonya Makko Restaurant. Again, this appears to be one of those places very often mentioned online and stuff. And it failed to impress me. I saw some mixed reviews on Trip Advisor, and I'd say you could probably believe some of them.

The place was pretty full and we were lucky to get a table even after they'd let the table we'd reserved go because we were a little late. We had the chicken pongteh, otak-otak, assam curry fish, and some sambal kangkung. The chicken was pretty decent, as with the otak-otak. The sambal kangkung was okay as well, but the curry fish was a bit of a nono. The curry was a little bit too watery for nyonya curry, and it just didn't taste particularly good. Sorry, but this nyonya descendant just doesn't buy it.

Shopping at Jonker Street after that was pretty fun, until it started raining more heavily. But I did get what I'd come to buy: cute hair accessories!

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The next morning, we all woke up late and had our 'breakfast' close to noon. By then, all the chicken rice ball places were full up to their ears, and apparently stay celup places don't open that early, either. So we ended up at some random coffee shop for some fried noodles and the like. It was actually pretty nice!

Then it was off for some more cendol at Donald & Lily's. This was pretty good, too! As with the rojak. We also ordered some more laksa, which was nice, and much much much better curry fish and chicken pongteh.

Our final stop was this tiny little shop that sells jam tarts. You wouldn't have noticed it if you hadn't already been looking. But it was awesome!

The jam tarts fresh from the oven were delicious! These jam tarts are the kind with the jam atop the pastry, not those with the jam wrapped up in the pastry. I did ask how long they would keep after buying and was told that they could last up to about a week without refrigeration; and maybe two if you put them in the fridge. But my advice? Eat it while it's fresh and hot! The flavours of the jam and the pastry just don't come together as well after awhile. I know that sounds strange, but it just tastes like you're eating two separate things. But when fresh, it tastes like one mass of crumbly + warm + gooey + slightly buttery + sweet + fragrant. Yum!