To Geylang Serai Food Center

I try to alternate between all delicious nasi padang stalls every week, and it was Geylang Serai Food Center for this last week of 2018. I can't close the year without a spicy meal at the nasi rawon stall (that I never remember the name of) at Geylang Serai Market & Food Center. People zoom here for the biryani, and I'm fond of the dum biryani Persian style here too. However, my heart belongs to all the Malay stalls. Heeeehehheeh. (Although I do not bother with queuing at Sinar Pagi Nasi Padang.) 

As much as I love sambal kerang, more for its paste than cockles, I won't order it anymore. I dunno how unpolluted those cockles are! I find a substitute in sambal tumis sotong. Oof. I never veer away from begedil and paru on the plate. That makes it rather hard to eat other foods when stomach capacity is limited! Hahaha.

We got here late- at 11.30am, and the tables are all full! Anyway, sharing a table is common here. The man and I ended up sharing a table with an older Malay couple. They had chicken biryani and nasi padang from Hajjah Mona. They were friendly and started chatting with us. They were actually not nosy, and simply made polite and happy conversation, so we went along with it. The wife and I went into giggles when both the men took out handkerchiefs to wipe their drops of perspiration.

The couple was a tad tickled that we could 'take spicy food'. I replied them in Malay that I love spicy food and can't do without a sambal of sorts in my fridge and a weekly nasi padang fix. But for the man's benefit, the rest of the conversation was carried on in English. I suppose that's the funny thing. When the man and I first started coming to this food center all those years ago to eat, the stall-holders used to ask if we could take 'spicy food'. Now, some still ask, not often anymore. They vaguely recognize us by now!! The man and I look distinctly like the majority race, and I think... the assumption is, Chinese people don't take spicy food the way Malay people do. *shrug 

Well, I take very spicy food. I'm quite sure the sambal belado and sambal tumis I fry up on any day will pass any makcik's standards. And I also can yak away in passable bahasa if need be. That's the benefit of growing up in a mixed race family, and also being forced to go through 12 years of schooling in academic Bahasa Melayu to erase the Baba Malay that one side of the family didn't want me to pick up.

It was hilarious. At the end of the meal and teh/kopi, we ended up knowing the names of all their children, how often they visit, and what they do, and such. We know where they live, and they know where we live (the area lah), but we don't know the couple's names. Neither do they know ours. But it made for a rather delightful chunk of lunchtime conversation. Oof.