Hajah Maimunah Restaurant, Jalan Pisang

An old friend of mine which I hadn't met up with for a while gave me a call one morning and pulled me down to the vicinity of Arab Street for an early lunch. I didn't have any idea where we would be going to until we reached the place (11 & 15 Jalan Pisang, S199078, tel : 62917248) and for a momentary couple of seconds, the place rang chimes of familiarity even though I was quite sure I haven't been there. And no, it wasn't from a strange dream that led to this déjà vu. Lol. It was YouTube and I remembered it from an episode of Anthony Bourdain in A Cook's Tour when he was here back in 03 and was eating nasi padang. And I believe that I sat on the table just next to the one that he did back then.

Even though nasi padang had been something that I've eaten since a child in one form or another, I've never really given much though to its origins until today when I was told that they originated from the people in the city of Padang in Sumatra. But I'm not going into that topic here.

tauhu telur

I haven't eaten tauhu telur that often. So I'm likening this to be one of the best ones I've had since it wasn't over fried into a shrivelled gnarly lump and the eggs that covered the bean curd weren't excessively chewy. This was better than the ones served in the Riverside Indonesian Restaurant or Sanur as I can recall.

mutton rendang

Their mutton rendang was quite good. Tender chunks of mutton in a nutty spicy gravy. While it might not have been an apple to apple comparison, I felt the rendang mutton here was much more note worthy than a certain beef rendang which many people claimed to be very good. This was more tender. Liked this rendition of the rendang better. Renditions aside, this topped the other hands down.

paru belado

Paru belado was something that I've become fond of over the years since I was introduced to it. The paru, or beef lungs can be found in Malay food stalls/restaurants are sometimes fried to death. The results are dry chewy pieces of lung jerky which can be a pain to eat. This rendition here was instead tender and chewy which I very much prefer over the dried and chewy ones.

begedil

Begedil - deep fried egg washed potato patties flavoured with pepper. Yummy!


I don't know the name of this dish, but it's not an otah. It's some fish with curried paste cooked in banana leaf and there was a little too much lemongrass in the curry paste than I liked. The fish too came with quite a bit of bones which made them tedious to eat.


The rice wasn't quite as fluffy as I thought from appearances but I was willing to overlooked that on the account of the gravies on the side. Had to exercise some restraint here since there was quite a number of tasty looking dishes to be had. I spied lemak siput sedut (small sea snails in coconut curry) in one of the troughs so that's something I'll be looking forward to the next time.