Should I satay or should I go?

A couple blog entries ago, after Jen and I went to the grand opening of the first Wendy's in Asia, I mentioned that the street was blocked off for all the satay vendors who open up their small cooking shacks and start roasting charred animal flesh into the sweetest smells you could ever imagine. Well, tonight we decided to venture back up to the market and traded square burgers for chicken on a stick.

This is not your traditional outdoor food market. When you walk up, the waiters all represent different satay shacks and they're in hot competition for your business. Even after we acknowledged a guy and decided to sit at his table, we still had 3 other waiters come by and throw menus in front of us reciting their specials. It's like the ultimate a la carte, with beer from one person, rice from another, and satay from any one of 8 others. There was beef/mutton satay, chicken satay, prawn satay and a variety of BBQ dishes with rice - all offered numerous times from different people. We decided on a simple plate of what looked like 25 chicken satay with 3 small bowls of peanut sauce and it was gone pretty quickly. During the meal, we had about 4 different people approach us, not selling food, but napkins and moist towelettes.

It's one of the most competitive eating environments I have ever seen, but the quality of the satay was worth any level of harassment. There was even one satay stand having a contest for the single person who could eat 80 satay in less than 20 minutes. Maybe I'll try that later, but in the meantime we got stuffed on meat on a stick. We're going to have to go back again before we leave.