Wurl Best Muslim Food (working the abs from inside out): Hajah Maimunah

After a par­tic­u­larly unevent­ful day doing admin­stra­tive tasks (phone calls, web updates et cete-fucking-ra), me and the boys went and tor­tured our­selves in the gym. It was a par­tic­u­larly long work­out, which made us real hun­gry, so we decided to ‘grab a bite’ before going home.

Grab a bite we did, at this restau­rant on Jalan Pisang, near the Arab quar­ter, near Arab Street (duh), called Hajah Maimu­nah Restau­rant & Catering.

Hajah Maimunah’s is one of those Nasi Padang type restau­rants, where you order rice per per­son, then pick the dishes which you will eat to your death.

It def­i­nitely isn’t fine din­ing, and Hajah Maimu­nah her­self wasn’t there (she prob­a­bly just super­vises the cook­ing), but I’m quite she wouldn’t have dis­ap­proved our ‘whack­ing’ the food the way we did, even if she’s the pious woman her title suggests.

While we would’ve liked to have tasted every dish on offer, we set­tled for beef ren­dang (prob­a­bly bet­ter at lunch, so you don’t get the bot­tom of the pot hard bits), pang­gang chicken in sweet gravy (wurl best), goreng chicken, (very) spicy sauteed clams, and a gen­er­ous help­ing of sam­bal (wurl best), and we ate our­selves to death. (I died a sec­ond time later, owing to my del­i­cately bal­anced diges­tive sys­tem — you know what they say — it ain’t a good curry unless it burns twice).

We’re gonna go back there for sec­onds some­day soon, prob­a­bly just before nor­mal lunchtime. And order some veg­eta­bles too.

It is a nice area to browse around, the Kam­pong Glam Con­ser­va­tion area. Just that the build­ings and streets are a lit­tle tricky to nav­i­gate around because they’re mostly in the process of being Con­served. So Kan­da­har and Bagh­dad Streets do, at this moment, look a lit­tle like the places they’re named for, I’m sure. There’s the mag­nif­i­cent Masjid Sul­tan to look at and take pic­tures of, and the lesser look­ing Masjid Mal­abar down the road (nice in it’s own blue bath­room mozaic tile sort of way).

Also prob­a­bly worth a look at is the Istana Kam­pong Glam, once home to Singapore’s only royal fam­ily (ah so desu ne area called Kam­pong Glam?). Now about to be turned into a museum, appar­ently. Will visit once the dust settles.

In all, not a bad evening. Got exer­cise, got food, got kulcha!