China town to Cherating

 Here we have a few snaps from our walk through china town to get transport to Cherating. There are of course a whole lot more foods to savor in china town, but unfortunately this time round I didn't get the chance. The first thing I was attracted to was the roasting chestnuts. I tried to ask what those black things were in the middle but the guy just looked at me funny. These things were of course delicious, an  earthy nutty flavour with a deep roasted aftertaste. I reckon it would be good with an icy cold beer on a hot day.

 The next thing that grabbed my eye was a fruit stall, of course being in SEAsia there were all kinds of crazy fruits available. One however really stood out and that was the "Jambu Madu"also known as the water apple. This thing cost me all of ten cents and was absolutely delicious. Its texture was something like a nashi pear, really juicy and really sweet as well. A real find.

What began in china town was my obsession with drinking crazy beverages. If it looked weird or had a crazy name I had to buy it. Longjack gold was to be honest a bit of a misfire, it wasn't carbonated for a start, and was insanely sweet, I cant really describe the flavour, I suppose it was  like a cross between yellow gatorade and mountain dew. It did however have a product called nicotinamide in it, which i thought would be like a nicotine patch but it turns out its just going to cure my altzheimers.

Upon our arrival in Cherating, a little beach village on the east coast of the mainland we found accomodation and then found a restaurant, it was one of the busest in town and they couldnt feed us for another 45 mins so of course I went off to find something to fill the gap. What I came upon was a culinary revelation. the Ramly burger.






It may not look like it but the Ramly tastes amazing, its pretty much just a cheeseburger with egg but the trick is putting all the condiments on the patty and then wrapping the patty in the egg. The Ramly burger is a malaysian institution that was started from a family run mobile food stall in Kuala Lumpur in 1979 and is now a billion ringgit industry.

The texture of this burger is absolutely divine, the condiments, the onions and the cabbage are all cooked to order so they still retain a little of thier crunch, there is kecap, malaysian chilli sauce and worstershire sauce to add heat, sweetness and tang. The meat was cooked perfectly and the bun was nicely toasted. When made right the Ramly oozes with eggy cheesy goodness that is hard to beat. Seriously one of the best burgers I have ever eaten. For less than 5MR its less than a maccas burger and a hellava lot tastier. I dragged everyone who would come with me back to this Ramly stall in Cherating, here is a shot of two of us enjoying a good burger ala carte Cherating style. We asked the chefs kid to take the photo but he ignored us. I think he was a bit scared to be honest. Probably a little presumptive of us. The chef was happy to take the photo or at least he pretended he was. Malaysian are famously acquiescent 

After my divine Ramly experience I went back up to the restaurant for the proper dinner. I relatively underwhelming chicken curry. Whilst nicely cooked i would say that it certainly wasn't the best curry i had in Malaysia. And not really worth waiting 45 mins for. That chilli you can see on the plate had a great kick to it though. The other guys had some local prawns that they had chosen live out of the tank near our table. Apparently the prawns were delicious and very cheap.

At the end of a long day I sat down with an ice cold tiger beer in the "beer garden" of the only bar in town called 'Dont tell mama' for 6MR the beer in Cherating was cheap and bought us a seat in the best spot in town, looking out at the only road and the hub of the bustling little village.