Padang

So I was flicking through my phone while waiting to pick up the kids yesterday, when I happened on a pic that brought back one of the great memories of Kupang - Padang.

Padang is a city in Indonesia, but it is also an eating style. The Malaysian version would be mixed rice. It's essentially a whole bunch of cooked dishes sitting in a shop window. You pick what you want, with a plate of rice (or bungkus in a leaf or paper) and pig out. Typical example is below:

There are a whole lot of dishes available: beef rendang, fried chicken, BBQ chicken, all kinds of fish, veggies, eggs, sambal, fried potato hash, you name it. I almost became addicted to this stuff when in Kupang - introduced to me by my team. I would bring it home at least once a week to share with the missus, and we loved it. Especially the sambal and curry sauce. OMG it was good.

The photo below demonstrates typically how I would eat it when with my team. When in a group, you can get the resto to bring over small plates of all of their dishes. You eat what you want and they return the balance. Possibly not the most hygienic practice (nor is keeping all of this food at room temp all day (hot here though)), but it works, and it's delicious. This photo was taken I think in Atambua, when we were on a road trip to East Timor.

The people experiences were the best part of Kupang. Overall, it was a bit of a hardship posting. But padang made it just a bit more bearable. God I loved that food! It was certainly not the healthiest food going around - a lot of fried stuff, and very rich gravies etc. But the variety, along with the awesome sambal (Padang 2 in Kupang had the spiciest) made it always a memorable experience.