Sometimes when the urge takes you, a drive outside KL for lunch can curb those city blues. Head over to Temerloh to a rather famous gerai where they serve superb gulai tempoyak

Is it any wonder that the best seafood gulais (a watery gravy infused with spices and pungent ingredients sans coconut milk) are located down by the riverside. Afterall if you wanted to find fresh river fish, wouldn’t riverside restaurants be the logical purveyors of them?

I remember that when I used to travel around Perak with my dad as a young girl, the riverbanks around Kuala Kangsar is where we stopped for fresh gulai tempoyak ikan patin. Tempoyak, the pungent and almost unbearable gloop of fermented durian achieves its full potential in a gulai. So thus, in Temerloh (where the craze for gulai tempoyak is just as prominent) we needed no instructions either than to head on towards the river.

Warung Mek Afidah was already buzzing with people by the time we pulled up. A rule of thumb- find places where there are loads of people eating. “Try and come a little early,” said my friend. “Then you don’t need to fight as much and food will be fresher”.

Gulai tempoyak is of course on the menu. Here the patin fishes, though not wholly wild are actually reared in the river itself. So even though they are in cages, there is plenty of room to swim around with fresh, flowing water running through ensuring the fishes have a clean, wholesome taste.

The gulai tempoyak in Pahang is definitely a spicier dish than Perak and it gets those sweat glands running. Typically you will be eating it during the hottest part of the afternoon. The gulai gives you heat and mellowness at the same time, a nasal cleaner and appetite opener. Cooked with old cucumber it is a brilliant dish of few ingredients and balance of flavours.

"The fish has a slight creaminess, a mark of freshness"

The patin itself is so fresh and tender; I almost expected it to leap from its bowl onto my plate. It indeed has a clean, milky taste, with a slight creaminess only the very fresh of seafood has. The fish is so soft it just melts into the hot rice on my plate. There’s no need for any other adornments. Just rice, gulai tempoyak and sambal belacan. Ooo… downed with some ice-cold sirap limau of course.

Another thing worth mentioning here is that they don’t reheat the gulai so each batch of fish is cooked on the premises, served instantly and only when that’s finished will they rustle up another batch. So if you come at the right time, all you have to wait is about 15 minutes and you’ll get freshly cooked fish right on your table.

The warung also has other goodies to sink your molars into like ikan keli with chillies, siput sedut and a rather impressive array of ulams. They have ulam raja, petai, all the leaves you can think of that releases a fragrant bouquet of a traditional Malay kitchen on your plate. They even have fresh daun gajus that you can eat with their sparkling hot sambal belacan.

So next time you’re driving over to the East Coast or heading up to the National Park from KL, do a pit stop at Temerloh, head to the river and get yourself some pungent-sweet, tongue-dancing gulai tempoyak ikan patin. After that get your friend to drive the rest of the way, as you curl up in the passenger seat, legs up on the dashboard for a delicious snooze.



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