With the food court here, you can now find food to eat at any time of the day. Some shops specialise in breakfasts, and others are only open in the evening. So, let’s start with breakfast………..
BREAKFAST TIME!
If you are a foodie, then do come to Tanjung Penyabong for breakfast and enjoy these unique Kueh Bakar (barbecued cakes). While the pandan-flavoured coconutty rice flour cakes are unique in themselves, there is one stall here which cooks them the old-fashioned way using coconut husks. Just look out for this smoke-filled hut, you cannot miss it.
When the count husks are nicely smouldering, they are placed under a tray to cook the kueh bakar. The batter is poured into the moulds and the kueh cook very quickly. The bottom of the cakes has a lovely crispy caramelised coating and they are delish eaten fresh.
You can purchase these local delights from this stall…….
So for breakfast, we had (from top to bottom of photo) Roti Canai with dal and a spicy sauce from another shop. Then from Shop No. 7 we had the green Kueh Bakar, the charred rolls of Pulut Panggang (glutinous rice stuffed with fish paste and rolled in banana leaves), and Nasi Dagang (glutinous rice with mackeral-like fish in spicy sauce). All these dishes were delicious.
Note the crosses on the table tops which are part of the RMCO rules which allow these restaurants to function. At the moment, customers are not sure if they should sit on the crosses on the benches, or sit next to the crosses! Anyway, people did try to make some separation, and we did have to have our temperature taken and personal details recorded for contact tracing if necessary.
Another shop I would like to tell you about is No. 6, from which we bought some delicious chicken in dark sauce and from which Hanis bought some foods to take home with her. Their selection of cooked foods was all fresh and well cooked and I would have got some Nasi Lemak from here if I wasn't already full! You will not find much English at these food stalls, but you will be able to communicate by pointing and just looking interested! Unless you are a very fussy eater, I am pretty sure you can find something to your taste.
DINNER TIME!
We also came here on our first evening to get some snacks after investigating the new jetty. The fried foods were purchased outside and the freshly-made fruit juices from one of the inside stalls.
The ‘snacks’ almost disappeared before I had time to photograph them! From left to right are Otak-Otak, fish sausages, deep fried bananas, deep fried pineapples, and Kueh Bakar (not as good as the morning’s version as not cooked over coconut husks).
Normally you would crowd around these hot vats waiting to make your choice, but not any more. Instead, they had put out chairs where you could wait under a sign telling you to ‘Keep your distance (jaga jarak). When your number came up, you could then go to make your selection, as long as you stood in the marked zones to keep you separate.
We took the easy route and let Hanis make the selection, but again you could point at what you wanted and these lovely ladies would have helped you. Just remember that you can still see a smile behind a mask!
You might be thinking that all we did on this trip was eat, and you wouldn’t be far wrong. But I must say that everything we ate here was tasty and I would like to encourage everyone to give it a try. The addition of a food court to Tanjung Penyabong makes this an odeal tourist destination. And, buying food from the locals is one of the easiest ways to help in the recovery of the economy and peoples’ welfare here in Malaysia.
TAKE-AWAY!
I have mentioned this place before ( A Day Out in Penyabong.), it is a restaurant called Hentian Bendang at Selera Kampung along Japan Air Papan. We had intended to eat lunch here on the way home, but we had eaten too much for breakfast! So instead, we popped in to get some take away foods. This place had only opened a couple of days before, and it too had marked routes for in and out, for separate seating requirements and temperature-taking, etc. There is no obvious signage for this restaurant, but you will find it at the end of a paddyfield.
It was noticeable that the previously visible canal running alongside the paddyfield was now completely overgrown with vegetation. It does not take long for nature to take over when humans aren't around.
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