Onde Onde

The onde onde is a popular Malaysian kueh that takes the form of bite-size pandan balls with brown sugar (gula melaka) inside and shredded coconut on the outside. It is a delightful snack. A bite on one produces a sweet squirt of gula melaka into the mouth and the coconut makes it a really delicious treat indeed.

This makan place in the Citta Mall adopts it as its name to reflect its Malaysian flavours.

Located on the ground floor of the mall in Ara Damansara, P.J. it is essentially an open restaurant serving breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

We first patronised the place several months ago when it had just started business. It was quite small and quiet then. 

And then its popularity picked up. They added more tables and their dining area expanded. But it apparently was not quite enough. We wanted to have dinner there after a movie at the mall one evening. We had to turn away because of a long queue waiting for vacant tables.

Now, let's have a look at some of their fares. First, the nasi lemak. I guess this all time favourite is a must in any Malaysian restaurant worth its salt. The nasi lemak here was delicious and complete - coconut flavoured rice, sambal, peanuts and ikan bilis, rembah deep fried chicken thigh, hard boiled egg, some salad and some crispy keropok.

Mee siam is another popular Malaysian dish. The fried mee-hoon was deliciously done and was served with a nice curry chicken.

This was another version of mee siam, with a variety of condiments - shredded chicken, omelet strips, peanuts, shredded cucumber, carrot, onion, pineapple and a couple of shrimps. When the condiments were mixed and tossed with the mee-hoon, it turned out to be a credible meal.

The mee curry was somewhat lacking. The curry just did not have the oomph.

This rather confused looking dish was char koay teow with duck egg. It certainly did not look very appetising. But the flavour was not bad at all. Not quite the Penang standard but better than a lot of char okay teows that I have had in the Klang valley.

The fruit rojak was not bad too. The sauce was good. The ground peanut sprinkling was adequate. I particularly like the keropok they had included. It made the rojak a lot more interesting.

This is a different kind of rojak - the pasembur. I had wanted to try it on our first 2 visits to the restaurant. But we were apparently too early. They only start preparing the pasembur around lunch time. When I finally got to eat it, I was disappointed. The all important deep fried stuffs in the pasembur were not up to standard. They were soft and soggy - not at all crunchy that they should be. Also they shredded the cucumber and sengkuang (jicama) too thinly. The sauce was okay, in fact quite good. It was the main ingredients that were disappointing.

They serve a variety of kuih muih. Their onde onde pictured above definitely lived up to the name of the restaurant.

And yes, roti kaya too. Prepared in the traditional coffee shop way.

They have a lot of other Malaysian favourites - laksa, Ipoh sar hor fun, hokkein prawn noodles, fish ball noodles, satay, ice kacang and so on and so on.

Onde onde is not the place for Malaysian holy grails. Some of the dishes we tasted were good. Some were mediocre. And some like the pasembur were disappointing. But their variety was impressive. It certainly is worth a visit.

Lara Djong Grang, Jakarta

I was in Jakarta for a brief one-night trip recently. There I met up with Kevin, Ganesh and Joel. That evening after we did what we had to do, we went out looking for makan. Kevin whipped out his mobile phone and Waze-guided the taxi driver to a restaurant he had found in the Internet.

The place went by the name Lara Djong Grang. It's location was on Jalan Teuku Cik Ditiro No.4, Menteng in central Jakarta. Both the restaurant and the road were mouthfuls in name. Outside the restaurant, it was a dark and mysterious. The place was surrounded by big trees and lighted statues of mythical creatures.

Inside, we were awed. The place was unreal. It was like we had walked into in an ancient civilisation - kind of an Indiana Jones sort of place. The interior was not much brighter than outside. The main dining hall was presided by 2 big and imposing figures of some legendary gods. The place made clever use of spot lights, candles and oil lamps to create a truly mystical ambiance.

They had a big collection of beautiful artefacts. I do not if they were all Indonesian in origin. 

We were seated in the main dining hall. The table was big. We were very comfortable and looked forward to a truly authentic Indonesian meal.

Besides the main dining halls, there were smaller dining areas and some private rooms - all of them with similar dim and esoteric settings.

Kevin did the honour, ordering all the dishes. I think he did hell of a job, considering that even though Indonesian and Malaysian dishes have a lot in common, most of the dishes listed in the menu were new to us.  And I honestly cannot remember everything we ate.

The drinks came first. Kevin had this coconut juice that tasted rather strange. I had a sip and a piece of the flesh. It was not like the ordinary coconut at all. It is hard to describe the flavour. The flesh was a little powdery. To me, it tasted somewhat like a decaying fruit. I didn't like it.

Mine was an equally strange drink. It came in a bowl. The waitress told us this could be also a dessert. It was a potpourri of strange things. The black stuff was a kind of cincau. The green thing was lime and mint jelly. The white blot was coconut flesh. Below these were small bits of a lot of other stuffs. I had no idea what they were. I think I tasted sago and nutmeg. The flavour of the whole thing was equally mixed. It was sweet, sour, and slightly bitter - all in one. With lots of ice on the bowl, it was actually a very refreshing drink. I liked it. I only wish I remember the name.

This other dessert drink was much like our ABC (air batu camper). I remember this avocado ABC on a previous visit to Jakarta.

Then the food started to arrive. We had 2 appetisers. The first was these rolls that were very similar to our lobak. I tasted meat and prawns. They were exotically served in a big sea shell. Tasted not bad at all.

The second started was these "udang swarloka" - deep fried prawn balls. Another interesting and creditable small-bite to tease the palate.

This was a serious sambal dish with roasted brinjal. The amount of fiery hot chilli in it was intimidating. I found the flavour too strong and spicy.

The salad was not unlike our rojak. It was the "karedok sunda" - a  Javanese dish of various vegetables in a peanut sauce. It had kangkung, cucumber, bean sprouts, cabbage, long beans, basil - all the rojak stuffs. It was delicious.

From the banana wrapping, I thought this was the otak otak. Far from it. It was a mixture of soft tofu and minced meat, cooked in a creamy sauce. It was delicious. I thought the dish was very innovative.

The grilled "gurame" fish was also very nice. The meat was soft and tender. The marinade was light but distinct. This was the first time I tasted a gourami. I always thought the gourami was an aquarium fish. I didn't know they eat them.

Indonesia is famed for its gado gado. I guess this one here could not be any more authentic. The ingredients were the same as the gado gado we have in Malaysia - tofu, egg, tempe (fermented soy beans), cucumber, sengkuang, etc. But the sauce was not quite. They do use a peanut sauce, but it was different. The sauce in our gado gado is similar to our Indian pasembur rojak. In Jakarta, I guess they do not have pasembur. Perhaps I am biased or I am used to our pasembur. I actually prefer our version.

I have never had so many varieties of satay before. This satay boat we ordered had 6 different types. There was beef satay, mutton satay, beef tongue satay, chicken on sugar-cane satay, fish satay and squid satay. Their preparation of satay was not quite the same as ours. They do not use the same marinade. And they do not offer the same peanut sauce. In stead, they provided different types of sambal and chilli pastes. We had a stick of each. They were delicious.

We had 2 soups. The first was the soto ayam. It was a milky soup with chicken, potato and I don't remember what else. It was slightly spicy but not fantastic.

Somewhat more fantastic was this soto bentut goreng - an oxtail soup. The meat (oxtail) was fried and served separately. The soup came in a small pot. The meat was tough and dry but the soup was superb. Perhaps we were supposed to immerse the meat into the soup. We did not.

We ate all these dishes with 2 different types of rice. This brown rice was quite fragrant and nice.

The yellow rice was the same as our nasi kunyit. It was glutinous rice (pulut) cooked in turmeric (kunyit). Of the two, I preferred the brown.

Towards the end of our meal, I noticed this side dish, compliments of the house. I thought it was a keropok (prawn/fish cracker) and did not pay too much attention to it. On closer look, I realised it was not keropok. It tasted more like fried fish maw. We asked the waitress and she told us it was "kulit sapi" - cow skin. Effectively we were eating leather. I joked that it definitely tasted better than my shoe. It certainly was the first and most delicious cow skin I ever had.

We hardly had room for dessert. But we wanted to sample some Indonesian after dinner sweets. We ordered two to share. The first was very much like our cendol. It was pandan flavoured green strips in suntan (coconut milk). It did not taste good. I had a spoon and it was enough.

More awful was these 2 pieces of green stuffs in a brown sauce. We stared at them for awhile wondering what on earth they were. The taste was worse than it looked. It was like a sponge cake in a mixture of gula melaka and milk. I still shudder at the thought of the taste.

I couldn't believe we ate so much that night. Our big table was to the brink.

Notwithstanding the desserts, it was a good and unique Indonesian experience. I guess we had some true authentic Indonesian dishes. The similarities between Indonesian and Malaysian cuisines are many. Yet they are so different. By any standard, Lara Djong Grang was a fabulous restaurant. It had the exotic ambiance and the genuine Indonesian food to match. We couldn't ask for more in Jakarta.

Mastan Ghani

When we finally woke up, I was ready to eat again. We checked out of the hotel and drove around town looking for food. We stopped by a biscuit shop and bought a fair lot of the goodies for our own consumption and to distribute to folks back home. Then we headed to Jalan Maharani a.k.a. 為食街 (glutton street) to look for food.

In our days, this was the town's favourite haunt for breakfasts. On both sides of the road are covered shelters for the hawkers. There were no such shelters then. There were just stalls by the sides of the road. I remember the wonderful curry mee, chee cheong fun, Peng Sok's lai fun (fat round rice noodles), loh mai fun (糯米飯 glutinous rice), and many more. I also remember there was a funeral parlour very near by. We used to eat while they preformed funeral rites not far from us. It was damn bloody eerie and spooky.

We walked both sides of the road. Nothing appealed to us. I couldn't find the curry noodle stall that I was aiming for. Perhaps we were too late - it was already 11.00 plus. So we kicked in plan B. We got back into the car and drove 2 road away - to Jalan Selat (Canal Road).

Mastan Ghani is mamak eatery. I remember this shop since I was a young kid. The shop must be more than 50 years old now. There are now many Mastan Ghani outlets in Teluk Intan. I was told the Ghani family is a large one and the many outlets were opened by the many children. This shop we went to was the original Mastan Ghani.

This original outlet in Jalan Selat specialises in just 2 dishes - mee rebus and rojak (pasembur). I believe the other outlets diversify to other foods. But I was quite happy with mee rebus and rojak. And I wanted to eat the original. We ordered 2 plates of mee rebus and a plate of pasembur to share.

Our drinks arrived first. This was my colourful Ais Bandung.

Our meals finally arrived. I took a sip at the mee rebus gravy and told myself - "Yep, this is the one". It had not changed one bit. This mee rebus was exactly the same as how I remembered it to be. It was absolutely delicious. We don't get mee rebus like this in KL, PJ or anywhere else. What we call Mee Java in the Klang Valley is nothing like this. In my plate were generous portions of solid prawn fritters, fried tofu, a whole egg (not half), bean sprouts (taugeh), crispy fried shallots, spring onion, green chilli and a cut of lime. The gravy was potato-based with flavour of dried shrimps. It tasted superb - not the sweetish crap like those we find KL and PJ. It was one heck of a mee rebus.

The rojak or pasembur was likewise fantastic. This taste also remained the same after these 50 odd years. The plate had the same ingredient as the mee rebus - prawn fritters, fried tofu, egg, etc. There was of course no noodles. Instead there were sengkuang (jicama) and cucumber strips and bean sprouts (taugeh). The gravy was not the same. It was more sweetish. Again, we don't find pasembur like this in the Klang Valley.

At RM3.50, the mee rebus and rojak were most reasonably priced - considering the generous prawn fritters and the whole egg. I would had had a second plate of mee rebus if only there was still room in my stomach. As we drove out of Teluk Intan for home, we were so very glad that plan B turned out so well. It should had been plan A in the first place. 

Thank you Teluk Intan for the memories. I don't know when I will be back next. Hopefully it will not be in another 15 years. And when I do, I hope the chee cheong fun, mee rebus, pasembur and all the other specialties will taste the just same as always.