Jonker Walk, Malacca Food Trip

I received today a positive comment on one of my blog entries about our backpacking trip last October, and I realized that I haven't posted anything about that trip in four months. It's a shame, really, because I still have a lot of stories and pictures to share about that adventure. I have my notes in my Moleskine notebook to remind me about our trip--that it wasn't just a dream--but my notebook doesn't have photographs. I did plan on documenting our trip on this blog so I can read back and look at our pictures and reminisce, but things got busy in December. Anyway, I'm going to pick up where I left off. My last entry about the trip was about our afternoon in Malacca, now let me tell you all about our food trip in Jonker Walk that evening.

If there is one thing you need to experience in Malacca, it would have to be Jonker Walk (or Jonker Street or Jalan Hang Jebat) in Malacca Chinatown, and it is best to experience it in the evening when it's alive and bustling with activity. The street is lined with antique stores and houses, and in the evening it is closed off and becomes a night market where food stalls abound.

We got to Jonker Street just before the sun set, and most food stalls weren't open for business yet. We were already famished at this point, though, so we decided to snack on the fare of one of the tables that were already ready to serve.

30 sen (P4.25) apiece, except for the sticks with pink tips which are 40 sen (P5.50)

cucumber was free :P

We tried the refreshments from this stall:

Abet liked the drinks here, we came back later in the evening.

I enjoyed the sweet-sour lime and plum juice

For dinner we tried Malacca's most popular dish at Restoran Famosa: chicken rice ball. Chicken rice ball is similar to Hainanese chicken rice (our favorite dish in Singapore), except that the chicken-flavored rice is served shaped like golf balls.

Abet's roasted chicken rice ball

my steamed chicken rice ball

Good and cheap, but I still prefer the chicken rice in Singapore. We walked around after dinner para magpababa ng kinain, and before long, we were ready to sample more of what Jonker Walk had to offer. Our pick this time: siomai! Siomai of different shapes and sizes and colors. We tried seven of these:

Abet loves tubo, he wasn't able to resist the sugarcane juice vendor.

I still haven't had my dessert at this point, so I bought a stick of assorted fruits dipped in chocolate. This wouldn't have been so bad if there wasn't a cherry tomato in it. Blech. A chocolate-covered tomato isn't really my idea of dessert.

To cap off our evening, we had shared a bowl of cendol at Jonker88, a museum-cafe which is probably the most popular spot on Jonker Walk:

Sorry, super blurred photo (again, DSLR n00b here). This was seriously the best thing I ate in our entire 11-day trip. I first fell in love with cendol when we were in Singapore last year, and it is now on the list of my top 10 favorite foods. Cendol is a similar to our halu-halo, except that its main sahog is red beans and green rice "noodle strips." There's the finely shaved ice, and coconut milk is used instead of evaporada. Then there's that dark brown syrup made from palm sugar that tastes just like the latik of the biko my momma makes.

Whenever I reminisce about our trip to Malacca, I fondly think about our Jonker Walk food trip (and the cendol, of course). Blogging about this experience and seeing all the food pictures above makes me want to go back. Since I don't see a trip to Malaysia in the near future, I think I just might drag Abet soon to a restaurant named Malacca along Jupiter and see how it compares to the food we enjoyed in Jonker Walk. If I'm lucky, the cendol will taste just the same.

Krup-krup

En route from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, our van stopped over at Kampong Thom, a province two hours from Siem Reap. A stall on the sidewalk had crickets...

and beetles (or what I hoped were beetles and not roaches):

I don't really care about edible insects, I was more interested in the persimmons and pomegranates in the next stall.

Abet, however, wanted to get the crickets. He sampled some and liked them, so we bought a small plastic bag for 7,000 riel--around P80--for pulutan in our hotel room later that evening. They weren't too bad, actually. Perfect with beer.

Please excuse the girly fingernails--he's a guitarist.

Yum!

On the way back from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh (towards Vietnam), we passed by Kampong Thom again. This time, we bought a tarantula for 500 riel (P6). Neither of us ate it. We'll stick to the crickets next time.

A Day in Kuala Lumpur

We started our first full day in Kuala Lumpur with a mad dash to the Petronas Tower in KLCC. We wanted to be in line for tickets by 7:30 so we can go up the Skybridge before lunch.


picture-picture at the train station

(My mother calls that my 'girl scout' dress. She hates it.)

We got to the ticketing center just before 8am, and there was already a long queue for the free tickets, even if ticket distribution wasn't until 8:30. We got tickets at around 9 am and were scheduled to go up at 11:15am. We hadn't had breakfast yet, so we had a quick meal at KFC in Suria KLCC, the sosy mall adjacent to the towers.


nasi lemak enak at KFC
I had nasi lemak enak with one-piece chicken. Nasi lemak or coconut milk rice is one of Malaysia's most popular dishes and is usually served with anchovies with sambal (chili paste), sliced cucumber, and peanuts (the one in KFC didn't have peanuts).

We still had time to spare after breakfast, so we went around the mall while I ogled the display windows of luxury shops: Chanel, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, Jimmy Choo... oooh la la! My eyes feasted over beautiful items I can't afford. We also checked out Kinokuniya, the Japanese mega-bookstore chain that we first experienced in Singapore, but we didn't buy any books yet.
We went back to the Petronas ticketing center 15 minutes before our scheduled time and browsed the gift shop while waiting for our visit.

Before we got to go up the Skybridge, we had to watch a short 3D video about Petronas Company and the towers and then had to go through a security check. We then took the high-speed elevator to the Skybridge on the 41st floor, 170 meters above street level. Visitors only have 10 minutes on the bridge.


There are interesting exhibits about the towers on the way out from the Skybridge visit. Afterwards, we window-shopped some more until it was time for lunch.

Lunch was at Nando's Peri-Peri Chicken. Nando's is a Portuguese restaurant chain whose specialty is chicken in either lemon and herb, medium, hot or extra hot peri-peri sauce, pero-peri being the humble siling labuyo. It's sad that the Philippines is not among the 26 countries in 5 contintents that Nando's has branches in, because the food was really good. Sigh.


1/2 chicken in lemon and herb sauce, corn, coleslaw

chicken kebabs in hot sauce, Mediterranean rice, and potato salad

I took home a bottle of one of their sauces. This is my best friend during my diet days when I eat nothing but boiled chicken. :D

Beside Nando's was Famous Amos, the cookie shop, and the smell wafting from its direction was just heavenly, we just had to buy some cookies.

free smells

After lunch, we were off to the KL Bird Park. On the way there, however, it rained. We had to cancel. I guess I'm not meant for bird parks. We had to cancel our trip to Jurong Bird Park at the last minute went we went to Singapore last year (we ended up on the Singapore Flyer) and now this. Drat. Anyway, look at the design of this train station, the Kuala Lumpur station on the KTM line. It's an attraction in itself:

Since we had no where else to go (the rest of the places in our itinerary were outdoors), we proceeded to Pavilion Mall in Bukit Bintang where we planned on having dinner anyway. We got some books at Times Bookstore.

We wandered around the mall (again, more designer stuff) until it was time for dinner. Ah, we waited to have dinner here for months, and it was one of the things we were most excited about with our backpacking trip: Carl's Jr!!! Yep, the burger chain that we sadly no longer have here in Manila. I'm such a fan of Carl's Jr back in college, I celebrated two birthdays here--including my 18th birthday! We were so excited to eat here that we didn't get to take any pictures of the food. This was after we wiped everything out (and we ordered a lot):


Dessert was at Baskin-Robbins, our first time, and I had another one of my "why-don't-we-have-this-in-Manila???" moments. We shared a bowl of Pralines 'n Cream, Jamoca® Almond Fudge and Rum Raisin:


My boyfriend was a happy, happy boy.

After dinner, we walked towards nearby Jalan Alor to buy more dried meat to take back home.

It was a good day, even if it wasn't exactly the day we had planned. We went back to our hotel happy and full and excited to read our books. Back in our room, we enjoyed our Famous Amos cookies, with beer for him (!) and with Yakult for me.

Afterwards, we got a good night's sleep to prepare ourselves for another adventure-filled day ahead.

The Jalan Alor Experience

Jalan Alor in Bukit Bintang in Kuala Lumpur is a side street dedicated to hawker stalls and is a popular foodie destination. When we went to Singapore last year, some of the best fare we had were the ones in hawker stalls, so Jalan Alor was definitely in our itinerary. In fact, it was our very first stop right after we got settled in our hotel, this is where we had dinner on our first night in KL.

Just stroll along this street and find something you like. The stalls serve pretty much similar stuff and were all full of both tourists and locals, so it was safe to assume that they were all the same and were all good.

We missed the food we loved in Singapore, so those were what we ordered in Jalan Alor. The dishes we got were from 5RM (P70) to 10RM (P14o).

hokkien mee


bak kut teh

satay

ais kacang

Was the food just like what we had in Singapore? No. The hokkien mee tasted more like char kway teow and had bits of chicharon and meat in it. The bak kut teh wasn't as peppery but had vegetables in the broth. The satay didn't come with rice cubes, and the peanut sauce tasted different. The ais kacang wasn't served with colorful shaved ice. But was the food good? DEFINITELY. The food was different from what I expected, but everything was really yummy. I especially loved the ais kacang (3RM/P42).

We had our first Tiger Beer (7.50RM/P105) of the trip here:

Tiger Beer & pineapple shake

Their fruit shakes (3RM/P42) was just fruit blended with a bit of water and ice--no sugar. I loved it. I also got a watermelon shake.

After our meal, we got some jerky/dried meat and pork floss for pasalubong from this stall:

They smoke their meat right there on the street:

Look at these goodies!

We didn't buy as much as we wanted because we'd have to lug the meat around for the next 10 days.

There were several fruit stalls in Jalan Alor and I wanted to get some durian to take back to our room, but Abet reminded me that durian is not allowed in hotels. I settled for some jackfruit and pink dragonfruit. The jackfruit was extra-orange and extra-sweet.

Jalan Alor is a vibrant street in the heart of Kuala Lumpur that is truly a feast for the senses. Every foodie who finds himself in KL needs to include a trip to Jalan Alor in his itinerary.

Jalapeño Cantina Mexicana

Abet and I skipped fine dining for our anniversary this year, we need to save our money for our backpacking trip next week. So instead of going to Paseo Uno which we originally planned, we wanted to go somewhere that wouldn't burn a hole in our pockets like a hotel dinner buffet would. My second favorite cuisine is Mexican and his is Japanese (#1 is Italian for us both) and on our shortlist were Jalapeño Cantina Mexicana in Ortigas Home Depot and two Japanese restaurants. Guess who decided to give way? He loves me, yes he does!

Boy, was he glad. The food we had was great, just great. It's my new favorite Mexican restaurant.

We always order quesadilla when eating in a Mexican restaurant, and here we got their Grilled Tomato and Cheese Quesadilla:

The tortillas were 8 inches across and were bursting with filling and came with generous portions of sour cream and salsa, and it was just P125. Compare with Mexicali's Garlic and Cheese Quesadilla which costs around P90:

Four small pieces, not enough filling, and paltry dips. I used to love these quesadillas, but Jalapeño ruined that for me. I don't think I can bring myself to order these from Mexicali anymore.

We also got the Baked Jalapeño Cheese Dip (P140):

The nachos it came with were good enough for three:

Abet had the Chili Beef Burrito (P125):


Pardon the bite mark.
I had the Grilled Chicken Fajita (P225, comes with 3 pieces of tortillas):


Sorry about the blurry picture, I've had my camera for over a year now but I still don't know how to focus. Meh. I got the fajitas, because at 26 years old, I still like to play with my food:


Make your own fajita--so much fun!
I have a low threshold for spicy food and rarely put chili sauce/hot sauce on my food, but theirs was really yummy, it was spicy-sweet. If they sold this, I'd buy a bottle or two:

My only complaint about the place was that it was too dim inside, in the indoor upstairs area where we were seated. Dim places strain my eyes. I had to take the photos above with flash. I avoid taking photos with flash in restaurants so as not to annoy other diners, but there were only two other tables occupied in our area, and both groups were really noisy, so I guess it was only fair, hehe.

Overall, we enjoyed the Jalapeño experience and I'm glad we dined there to celebrate our third year as a couple. The food were all great and reasonably-priced. For our meal above with two bottles of beer and two glasses of iced tea, our bill was just exactly P800. We were already too full to get dessert.

Of course, no dinner date will be complete without dessert, we walked to Metrowalk para magpababa ng kinain, and a little while later I got to have a Kahlua Chocolate Sundae, my favorite thing to eat at Icebergs:

It was a happy anniversary, indeed.

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Jalapeño Cantina Mexicana

Food Street, Ortigas Home Depot

Julia Vargas, Pasig City