We had a lovely evening cocktail at the Executive Lounge of G Hotel Kelawai earlier. Yet we still felt peckish an hour later, lol. Not a big problem anyway as there were plenty of food options in the area. We headed out and made our way towards Gurney Drive Hawker Centre, which was just a stone’s throw away. Probably just a 8-minute walk.
Arrived here at around 9pm+. Wasn’t as crowded as I expected as there were lots of empty tables around unlike during supper hours at Kimberley Street Night Market or New Lane Hawker Centre.
Nothing really caught our fancy except for this pasembur stall (no. 9) which I remembered seeing on some travel show before.
What is pasembur?
It’s the Malaysian version of Indian rojak, consisting of cucumber, potatoes, fried tofu, fritters and/or fried seafood drenched in a sweet and spicy sauce.
Here, you can find a huge selection of various fried items.
Just use the tongs and pick whatever you want. Hand over to the guy who will chop everything up into bite sizes.
Pasembur
We selected 5 different items – cheese sausage, fish cake, meat roll, prawn fritter and coconut fritter. To our horror, 3 out of the 5 items had turned rancid and sour. Only the two fritters were edible.
As they did not refry the items, everything was basically soft and soggy. Taste wise – stale and just not great. We gave up after two bites as the bad aftertaste just made us lose our appetite. Didn’t bother to bring it back to the stall too.
Perhaps we came on the wrong day/timing when there was a low turnover so what we had were the old leftovers. Oh well.
Fresh starfruit juice with no added sugar. Super refreshing!
Fried skewers
Just when we were about to leave the hawker centre, we came across this fried skewers stall. Decided to take a risk and order something for takeaway. Picked out 4 sticks of different items which they popped into the deep fryer to crisp up.
Liked the beancurd skin – very crispy and crunchy. Squid was good too, not rubbery at all. Fish balls were very floury and had somewhat of a weird taste. Bacon tasted just as expected.
Final thoughts
Not so sure if Gurney Drive Hawker Centre is worth visiting anymore. Not much of an atmosphere when we were there. Food selections were ordinary. Prices were on the high side too. And that bad pasembur definitely made the experience worse. ??
Closed on Tuesdays
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