It’s hard to single out a favourite dish at the Jonker Walk Night Market in the Malaysian city of Melaka, such is the vast array of amazing street food on offer. But certainly among the highlights for us were the oysters, freshly shucked and gently warmed on a gas barbecue.
Melaka is south of the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, part-way between K.L. and Singapore. A UNESCO world heritage site, it is the home of Peranakan cooking, a delicious marriage of Chinese and Malay cooking. Its cuisine also reflects other influences including Portuguese, Indian, and Arabic.
In the heart of Melaka’s Chinatown, Jalan Hang Jebat, formerly known as Jonker Street, is lined with Peranakan shophouses, many of which have been given colourful facelifts. Between 6pm and midnight on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, traffic is blocked and the street is transformed into the Jonker Walk Night Market.
Some of the pop-up stalls sell trinkets and souvenirs, but the vast majority sell street food, almost all of it cooked on the spot. A couple of stalls sell oysters and scallops. The oysters we tried were from a very popular stall in Jalan Hang Kasturi, one of the narrow lanes running off the main thoroughfare.
We perched on the tiny plastic stools that are ubiquitous in south-east Asia and ordered a plate of oysters, along with a serving of fried carrot cake — not carrot cake as we know it but a mash of radish, garlic, egg and bean shoots.
We couldn’t find out anything about the provenance of the oysters other than that they came from Japan. We enjoyed them with a can of Guinness for Maurie (a classic combo) and a glass of sugar cane juice for me.
You can read more about the Jonker Walk Night Market in this Food Wine Travel post, Jonker Walk Night Market, Melaka: An Amazing Array Of Street Food.