ate rendang at a kenduri today and wow… i forgot how good it is. the beef was so soft it just melted, and the gravy was thick and full of spices. you can tell it’s been cooking for hours because every bite is just packed with flavor.

rendang isn’t the kind of thing you eat every day, so having it at a kenduri makes it feel even more special. like you’re sitting there with a plate of rice, rendang, maybe some other lauk, and suddenly you’re just so thankful food like this exists.

the taste is hard to explain—it’s spicy, a little sweet, and kinda nutty from the coconut. the heat builds up but you don’t stop, you just keep going. pair it with plain rice and it’s basically perfect.

Mum got her Laksa (叻沙), a popular dish in Singapore, containing influences from Chinese, Malay, and other cultures. At its core, laksa is a spicy soup comprising the base ingredients of coconut milk, dried shrimp, fishcake, fish balls, fried bean curd puffs, blood cockles and prawns. This bowl doesn’t have prawns and mum don’t like cockles so we asked for it to be excluded. The noodles here is the thick rice vermicelli and topped with finely chopped laksa leaves (Persicaria odorata).

I went with the dry style XO Minced Meat Noodle (XO 肉脞面), opting for thin yellow noodles. For the toppings, it came with minced pork, sliced pork, braised mushroom, fish ball, fishcake, a fried wanton and crispy tempura bits. Mix the noodles up with the savoury brown sauce and tuck in.