I thought I had reached the bottom of the taste food chain with Durian the other day, but it was nothing next to “cempadak”. This stuff is just horrible. You can see in the first picture it looks kind of unassuming, somewhat like a pealed peach. The taste was absolutely so repulsive that I ended up taking about four bites just so that I could really experience and understand what made it so terrible. By the fifth bite, my body actually had a Pavlovian response and my throat closed up.

Then someone had the bright idea to deep-fry them, so they took them to the back of the restaurant and did it. My hosts (Lee Mei and Yoke Chin in the pic) explained to me that deep-fried cempadak was actually a preferred way of eating them. Why I listened to them after a week’s worth of food lies is beyond me. So I tried it, and it was just the same old taste just hotter than hell. In fact, it tasted like I was putting a red-hot molten glass ball in my mouth.