Heartland Nasi Lemak (Review)
I thought that it wouldn’t be fair to do a review of the Qiji interpretation of the humble nasi lemak (I think they glorified it) but not do the heartland version.
So here goes. This is well and truly a more humbled version. It is so no frills I had no trouble identifying everything within the packet in a nano-glance. All I did was blink and that was the end of my meal. I saw in my mind’s eye exactly how I would chow down this plate and it was unglamorous.
My wife saw my somewhat bewildered expression and immediately offered some Belinjo crackers that she had bought earlier, just to make up the color. It sort of looked slightly better after that. But there was just too much white (rice) and not much of anything else.
This is truly the cookie cutter version with just the ikan bilis and kacang goreng all sealed in individual packets. This nasi lemak reeks of industrial kitchen-ness. Everything seems to be commoditized, right down to the chilli. All sealed ready to be assembled in a production factory-like style.
I had to top up 50 cents for a piece of otah-otah which kind of made it a little better. The only other thing that was not from the industrial kitchen was probably the kuning fish. Interestingly this fella was even smaller than the previous one.
I was so tempted to make my own masterpiece that I assembled the kuning fish as if like jumping out of a sea of nasi. Kids, don’t do this at home.
I guess you could say I was reasonably bored with my unflattering breakfast. Alright, to be fair what would one be expecting for $1.60 (SGD), by far it was the cheapest nasi lemak I have eaten in a long while. And it was just as delicious as the glorified version.