PETALING JAYA, Jan 25 — Anyone who’s lived or worked in and around Damansara Utama will almost certainly be familiar with the open-air food court that fed office workers in the area for decades.
It was a popular lunch and after-work haunt, even though its loose umbrella setup meant inclement weather was always a threat.
Last November, it reopened as Uptown Eats with a brand-new setup, featuring well-ventilated seating, wash basins, and a proper roof overhead.
More importantly, it retained most of its existing vendors, including longtime crowd favourites, of which many have been around since the early 1990s, like Ah Keong Yong Tau Fu, Steven Western Corner, and Uptown Curry Fish Head.
With new digs come new faces. One of the “new kids on the block,” as it were, is Gepuk District, a stall specialising in the eponymous dish of ayam gepuk.
It’s an Indonesian dish of fried chicken lightly smashed with a pestle and smothered in a ridiculously spicy sambal, and it is typically served with rice, charred cabbage, and a thick cashew nut sauce known as kuah kacang gajus.
I’ve made no secret of my ambivalence towards the dish, but lately I’ve come around to the combination of sweet kicap, creamy cashew nut sauce, and supremely spicy sambal.
Maybe some part of me thinks the pain from the sambal is the only way to feel alive anymore — that spice-induced tears and sweat trickling into my eyes are the only way to restore the light that left them long ago.
I saddled up and paid a visit at lunchtime, when throngs of office workers descend upon the food court.
Queues are a common sight at this hour, but none so long that you’d have to wait much.
Gepuk District was one of them, with the queue to order stretching all the way to the neighbouring stall.
Most people are here ordering either Set A (RM13.80) or Set B (RM15.80), both of which come with a gargantuan piece of fried chicken — an upper quarter with the neck and wing intact — along with sambal, cashew nut sauce, and rice.
While Set A is rounded off with a plain stack of fresh cabbage, Set B ups the ante with charred cabbage, deep-fried tauhu and tempe, and fried gizzard.
If Set B sounds more comprehensive and satisfying on paper, that’s because it is. Having tried both, Set B is infinitely more syiok, with the combination of kicap, sambal and cashew nut sauce complementing just about every fried item on the plate, be it the chicken, gizzard, cabbage, tauhu or tempe.
Interestingly, the chicken isn’t smashed. One could argue that it is no longer ayam gepuk if it isn’t, gepuk being the Javanese word for “pounded”, but it would take a true pedant to do so.
After all, it is served with all the traditional ayam gepuk accoutrements, and the most important thing here is the sambal, which is appropriately spicy and, for me, just savoury enough.
It is the best part of the entire dish, so much so that I ordered an extra portion (RM2.50) to go with the mammoth piece of chicken.
In a revitalised food court filled with old favourites, it is encouraging to see a newer stall selling a buzzier type of food.
Ayam gepuk has become extremely popular amongst my cohort over the last few years, and Gepuk District does it well, at a price that most working folks in this area can afford.
It is a welcome addition to Uptown Eats, which, come to think of it, reminds me a lot of the food courts in Singapore. We just happen to have much better food on this side of the causeway.
Gepuk District
Stall 1025, Uptown Eats,
Uptown 7, Jalan SS 21/39,
Damansara Utama, Petaling Jaya.
Open daily, 11.45am-3pm, 6-11pm
Tel: 019-330 2805
* This is an independent review where the writer paid for the meal.
* Follow us on Instagram @eatdrinkmm for more food gems.
* Follow Ethan Lau on Instagram @eatenlau for more musings on food and occasionally self-deprecating humour.
