I went for perhaps the least nutritionally dense meal I have ever had. I took the LRT to Dato Keramat in the Ampang area, where there are lots of food shops and stalls clustered in small markets near the station. It’s a largely Malay area, unlike most of those I normally frequent. There is located the famous Roti John Titiwangsa, purveyors of, that is right, roti john. This is the Malaysia equivalent of the Pakistani bund kabab. The bund kabab, which has many names but this is my preferred one, is a sandwich, very soft baguette-shaped bun (the bund) which encloses a thin omelette, a shami kebab (a meat and chana daal patty, very like a falalel with a bit of meat mixed in), julienned cabbage and onions, and sauces, usually mayonnaise and tomato sauce. It’s one of my favourite roadside snacks, and back in the days I used to visit to fieldsites across Pakistan that required very early morning starts, a tamer homemade version was my preferred breakfast to keep me going through the day.
The roti john is a similar soft baguette. Instead of a kebab, it has a small amount of meat cooked on cast iron pan, and the bun is mashed on top. This is topped with an omelette and a vast amount of sauce. The one last night had a very sweet ketchup and perhaps a sweet chilli sauce. The amount of non-sauce filling was, unfortunately minimal, even though I got the daging special, which is supposed to be beef and anchovies, but I couldn’t detect any anchovies. Anyhow, I’m glad to have tried it, and specifically what is reputed to be one of the best renditions. Certainly there was a long queue, and some very large gentlemen who were obviously regulars arrived on motorcycles and also ordered the daging special, though they had the large (twice the size of mine) so I ordered what I was supposed to.
I took the LRT back to KLCC where I picked up a strawberry cream cake from the Japanese bakery and took a slight detour on the way back to admire the Petronas towers and their dancing fountains. The photos are a little blurred but that is my poor camera.
I finished the new Attolia book by Meghan Whalen Turner. She does a good line in light, pleasant, well-written stuff, and after the disappointment of the Seraphina sequel a few days ago it was good to read some well-done fluff.
I didn’t do any proper writing.
